Long-distance Collaboration

Whether out of choice or necessity, remote working has become the norm after the events unfolding in 2020. During extended and repeated lockdowns, companies and individuals across the globe have had to pivot between centralised and remote workflows, in particular in the Media and Entertainment industries.

Collaborating remotely creates challenges to communications and efficiencies. Determining how data can be safely and securely shared is probably the biggest concern with cyber threats at every turn. Next is latency or delays in moving data between teams.

Music is notoriously sensitive to latency, being problematic even when all the equipment is in the same room. So how can you collaborate with co-writers and band members even further afield?

If you’ve wrestled with singing along to your school mate playing guitar over a Zoom call, you’ll know exactly what I mean. But what if the band is spread across multiple countries and continents?

The time it takes for audio data to make the round trip over long distances makes it impossible for two-way ‘live’ collaboration. The best outcome in this situation is the backing track musicians play without listening to remote singers/soloists doing there thing. The final output is the singer singing along to a backing track that has effectively already been performed.

Collaborative writing and recording are ‘offline’ tasks that can be run independently if care is taken over how data is shared.

Google Drive

Google Drive is your friend and can be set in a way where all your files are automatically synced between your desktop and the cloud. Any collaborators who share files this way see your synced files in he same way. Depending on the size of the files, it can take a few minutes to send data back and forth. The trick here is not to regularly share enormous project files containing GBs worth of audio WAV files.

Project data containing MIDI information is very light and easy to exchange so provided that you and your collaborators are using the same systems and software this is great start.

System Setup

Having the same platform running the same OS, application software and plug-ins is the essential mix to opening up project files created by a collaborator. The next is being able to locate assets, most likely library samples and WAVs, which by default will be under your user directory on your physical machine, and therefore need to be moved to the Google Drive sync folder.

Versioning

Whether you work in the same studio space or remotely you will have an in-house policy for naming files, and who can read, write or do both to them. Imagine two people working off the same file, making separate changes, then each saving with the original name. Person 2 saves their version over Person 1’s, and anything Person 1 did is potentially lost.

Add speed and multiple collaborators and you can see where this might lead. Setting folder privileges to read-only can help. Also creating new file names according to an agreed versioning structure will help. Here is an example of how you can categorise your songs by running order, name, version, date and user initials, and how a collaborator may name their version:

01_hitsong_v2.01_20210925_dg

01_hitsong_v2.02_20210927_js

Communications using Slack

Clearly communication is key, so making notes available to other users, helps massively. Enter Slack, an easy way to set up ‘channels’ relating to different songs or projects. Here, notes, links, images etc. can be shared among the group. Even better still, Slack is free for just about anything you’re likely to want to do, and cheap even if you move to a Pro version.

https://slack.com

Conclusion

Remote collaboration is here to stay. It’s not a replacement for its face-to-face equivalent, but does carry some advantages. Firstly, you can reach out further than ever before. You’re not limited by distance so the talent pool grows. Secondly, the greater cross-pollination of talent and tools to release music independently is great for widening your fanbase.

The proliferation of music software on affordable subscription models make professional tools more available than ever.