How do you collaborate with others or work with clients?

[opusonix]

Hey all,

Do you collaborate with other people on projects, or work with clients? If so, what's your workflow for the initial file exchanges, the management of the project as you work through it, and the final delivery?

Thank you all very much!

[cryophonik]

I used to collab with other musicians and producers pretty frequently, but not so much in the past few years. With my main collaborator (and a few others), we would always use the same DAW and plugins and we’d share the project files over a share site, but I’ve also done it where we just share audio tracks/stems (also over a share site), which allows each of us to use our preferred DAWs. The better method really came down to our objectives and how much allowance we would give ourselves to edit each other’s parts, vs assigning roles where each person is assigned specific tracks or instruments, or one person’s role is primarily composition, another leads sound design, or mixing, etc.

These days, my collabs are much simpler - I do everything except write the lyrics and sing the vocal parts, which is the singer’s role. We recorded everything together in my studio, and I finish the song with her input on the initial drafts.

[havran]

"Opusonix streamlines the review and approval process for audio engineers and producers. It enables real-time and asynchronous collaboration with clients, featuring audio annotations, version comparisons, and feedback tool."

And you're just now asking others how it's done?

[sjm]

I've done many collars on the past, from recording other musicians, to hotseat to online. I'm going to assume you are asking about online collaboration, as the first two are pretty self explanatory.

I use FL Studio, and therefore primarily work with other FL users. FL had a very handy feature for sharing projects, where you can save the entire project including audio files as a .zip. So if you are using samples or recording your own audio, it's really easy to ensure that everyone has access to these files without any manual steps. FL also has great stock plugins for a lot of use cases. It only really lacks (good) plugins for things like guitar amps etc., i.e. stuff used in more traditional studio workflows.

If I add guitar, for example, I'll render the audio with the amp plugin baked in, because the other users rarely own these plugins.

When working with users of other DAWs, there's a lot more overhead involved, as you need to transfer audio files, or, in a pinch, MIDI file exports and presets.

This means that it is much easier to work with someone using the same DAW, as you simply exchange project files and any audio files. All users can easily edit notes, chop up audio in the project etc. As such, it's much easier for everyone to edit anything.

When working with different DAWs, things are much easier if each collaborator focuses on "their" parts - like how a guitarist contributes the guitar parts and the drummer contributes the drum parts in a traditional band.

However you collaborate, the key to a successful outcome is communication. Before you start, check what plugins the other user has that you might want to use if you are using the same DAW. Anything that isn't owned by everyone involved needs to be rendered to audio. If possible, keep things simple and only use plugins that everyone had access to - a DAW with good stock plugins is much easier for everyone involved.

Also make sure you check that everyone is roughly aligned on the project's direction. You don't want one person trying to make trance while the other wants to make hip-hop.

And communicate clearly while working on the project too! Whenever you send the project back, tell the other contributors what you've changed, what you think still needs addressing or is missing. Before you make wholesale changes to someone else's work, check in with them and discuss the changes. And try not to feel like you own any particular part. It's a collab - everyone is working together to create the best work you can as a group. Accept that this means that others may well change a melody you wrote, switch up the beat etc.

[opusonix]

And you're just now asking others how it's done?

Yes, I am! Opusonix is quite new, and while we've done user research before the development of the project, this is our ongoing effort to understand our users so we can tweak our designs to better serve. So yes, I am still genuinely interested in how you guys do your things. Plus - everyone works slightly differently, so we are eager to learn.

[opusonix]

However you collaborate, the key to a successful outcome is communication. Before you start, check what plugins the other user has that you might want to use if you are using the same DAW. Anything that isn't owned by everyone involved needs to be rendered to audio. If possible, keep things simple and only use plugins that everyone had access to - a DAW with good stock plugins is much easier for everyone involved.

Also make sure you check that everyone is roughly aligned on the project's direction. You don't want one person trying to make trance while the other wants to make hip-hop.

And communicate clearly while working on the project too! Whenever you send the project back, tell the other contributors what you've changed, what you think still needs addressing or is missing. Before you make wholesale changes to someone else's work, check in with them and discuss the changes. And try not to feel like you own any particular part. It's a collab - everyone is working together to create the best work you can as a group. Accept that this means that others may well change a melody you wrote, switch up the beat etc.

Couldn't agree more! It's also interesting that you are sending the entire zipped sessions back and forth. That's a lot of data exchange! For a typical project, do you anticipate a lot of these back-and-forths, or do you normally just deal with a limited number of exchanges?

[sjm]

Couldn't agree more! It's also interesting that you are sending the entire zipped sessions back and forth. That's a lot of data exchange! For a typical project, do you anticipate a lot of these back-and-forths, or do you normally just deal with a limited number of exchanges?

Tbh, most of the time it's just been one shots or short snippets of audio rendered from the track for chopping/slicing. So a few MB tops.

The few times I have sent longer audio files, it's generally just a single edited vocal or guitar take, and you're easily under the 50MB limit of Discord, which is what I mainly use. That said, if nothing has changed in terms of audio files, we just send the project; and if it's just a single audio file that gets added to a big project, we just share that file.

In general, you tend to get a lot of audio added right at the beginning, while you're sketching out the track - typically one shots for drums, maybe a drum loop for chopping, and the odd audio file for vox or other random instruments. Maybe a rendered audio track using a plugin the other users don't have if you need a special plugin to get *that* sound (for FL, probably granular, as the stock granular plugin is very basic). So maybe there are 1-5 big exchanges right at the beginning with audio files being added, albeit often just small ones. Then, once it's more about perfecting what is already there, the amount of new audio files added tends to be minimal. Maybe a guitar solo or backing vox, and if you are using the same DAW, you can keep these files nice and short (20 second solo, 15 seconds of backing vox). So the amount of data is minimal.

I should maybe add the caveat that I tend to do a few types of collabs:

1. Adding vocals or guitar to tracks that are 90% complete. I get sent an MP3, record my part, edit it and send it back, potentially with processing baked in (or sometimes I send both wet and dry). Whoever created the bulk of the track is then responsible for the final edit and mix. It's typically their track with a guest appearance, so that just makes sense.
2. More electronic MIDI-based stuff with VSTis and minimal audio. Lot of back and forth of project files, minimal back and forth of audio.
3. One person is "the producer". Participants record their parts over an MP3 of the current state and upload the take as a wav file. The producer then integrates it with the track and publishes a new MP3. They'll also often create the first bare bones project and do all the MIDI editing and mixing. So the sharing of big audio files only goes one way: from creator to producer. Everyone is free to make general suggestions as to what they would like the producer to do, but at a high level - "we need a break before the third verse" or "the vocals could maybe do with an echo".

If you're interested, here are examples of each:
1: I just wrote the lyrics (you can see them on Soundcloud if you're interested) and recorded the vox. DNL made the rest of the music, though I made a few suggestions regarding arrangement and instrumentation, as well as creating a mock-up guitar solo that didn't get used - DNL took the basic idea and did his own thing.
https://soundcloud.com/dnldth/dnl-steev ... he-old-lie

2: The genesis of this track was the guitar sample that appears a few times, e.g. around the 2 minute mark. We don't actually know who made that sample - someone in the Discord server uploaded it, but none of the obvious culprits could remember creating it The heavy guitar chords are a short loop I recorded. The metamorphosis part towards the end is chopped up audio/audio loaded in FL's stock granular plugin. The source audio was created by rendering out parts of the track from before and after the section starting around 4:15. There are also numerous one shots and chopped up drum loops. The final .zip is ~80MB, but we won't have been sharing the .zip all the time. Just when needed for new audio and when the project was finished to archive it. It could probably be a lot smaller if we'd have done some clean-up...
https://soundcloud.com/steevm/madam-lafurs-theme

3: This is an "unfinished" (hence private) 3-way collab with some very obvious issues we never fixed. D-Rusta and I did the vox (he went first) and I played the "sax" on keys. audiosabre created the backing track, edited the parts and mixed everything. IIRC, we recorded over MP3s and sent the vocal takes and sax to audiosabre as wav files. Pretty sure we also made random suggestions and gave feedback, though this was 7 years ago...
https://soundcloud.com/steevm/chillax-t ... WToDKIuz1p

Obviously if you are recording lots of instruments and vocals shared among the participants, you get a lot more audio to share, and it probably makes more sense to use DropBox or whatever to coillect everything in one place - or use the aforementioned "producer" approach. Then just download whatever changed since you last downloaded the audio. Same if you are working in more than one DAW and can't share projects. Then you might need to regularly share large amounts of audio. This isn't something I've ever done online; when recording a "real band", I've only ever done it offline with people in the same room.


One thing I didn't mention in my previous post is that any collab is much more likely to succeed it the people involved already know each other. You're much less likely to be left hanging by someone who engages with you socially (even if just online) than some rando going "wanna collab bro". I avoid the latter like the plague.

[opusonix]

@sjm, thank you so much for the great details you provided. The tracks sounded very cool as well! Good point on the fact that you didn't need to move a lot of audio frequently. I guess if the collaboration works out well - you probably shouldn't need to do that at all. What was also eye-opening was the collaboration in stages. Each stage seem to have their own objectives and require a certain amount of file exchange (and more importantly, discussion). That was very enlightening. Thank you for sharing!!

[dawdrive]

for the initial file exchange part specifically, that's the bit that annoyed me enough to build something. made a tool (DAWShare) that checks your ableton/fl project's samples actually got included before you send it, and fixes the paths so it just opens right on the other end instead of hoping collect all and save grabbed everything. the full app i built addresses your project management concern!

[sjm]

for the initial file exchange part specifically, that's the bit that annoyed me enough to build something. made a tool (DAWShare) that checks your ableton/fl project's samples actually got included before you send it, and fixes the paths so it just opens right on the other end

As long as you put the files in one of the browser folders - which should already include your project folders - FL will find all the files, as it's not based on absolute paths. The only risk is loading the wrong file if another one already exists with the same name; and you can't "fix" that any other way than renaming one of the files. Which will break any projects using the file. Project folders take precedence, so use them!