Working together vers. alone

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Carsten Trotzkowski on May 13, 2008 at 12:28pm

I personally used to work on my music all on my own - most of the time due to a lack of ability to join a band (geographically, or because of time restrictions from my job and family).
That's why I really put some faith into this project - working with other musicians unlimitied by geographical or hour schedule boundaries. Maybe even free of cultural boundaries.
It may sound a bit theatrically - but I am waiting for an opportunity to free my musical ideas from the limitations of my brain and skills - you don't always make the best compromise when performing all parts of a band on your own. To discuss fresh ideas of others, to try to integrate unpredicted additions or alterations into your own work, will surely be the better compomise in the end.
After all, it's all about faith. As I can tell for myself, I have trust into the community. I invite every member to take what you like from my ideas to make it a plus.

Permalink Reply by Marco Schneider on May 23, 2008 at 11:36am

When working on musical projects (or any other creative work) my preferred strategy is to go from very small to big and to small again. The first idea of a song is always an individual thing. Then you have to work and experiment a lot to get the imagination and direction. This part should be worked out intensivly and then taken to the next step in high quality. For my opinion taking too less time for the first step leads to incomplete informations for the community and causes dissatisfying input from other people. In the second step it has to get bigger and bigger, you have to collect and discuss as much as possible and let your baby be manipulated in every kind. After that it needs to be focused again. Ideas that help to strengthen your first imagination or take the whole thing even further has to stay. Other elements that doesn't help to focus or even mask the song idea have to be thrown away. At this step it gets small again and a group of two or three people make the essential decissions while editing and mixing.
I see this platform at step 2.
What do you think? Can you imagine an online community as a strong decision machine in creative processes (step 3)?
How do you work in general and what do you expect from online communities?

Thank you for any input
Best regards

Marco

Permalink Reply by Dieter Huober on May 23, 2008 at 11:48am

Hi Marco,
I can imagine that you need both: The creative offline process to work out an idea and the creative online process to discuss, change, come back, discuss... -- it's more or less like in the real world. The big advantage is you have access to many people which are involved in the same issue and you have access to people around the world which is not so easy possible in the real world. The way your work in this community depends on the way your work in the real world. Some artists like to cooperate just in the begining, others later... - However you have all possibilities to use the platform "as you like it".

Best regards, Dieter

Permalink Reply by Andreas Schwall on May 23, 2008 at 1:41pm

Hi Dieter,
you hit the mark of the idea! => as you like it! I would even go further.............it's some kind of fertilization of different ideas combined with technical support. It's a kind of leverage and compensation at the same time . "I have something, that you don't have! And you have something that I missed for such a long time!". I'm a terrible singer. Roubina is a good singer, but with no technical equipment. By using audacity, we may exchange our ideas and work together on a project. At the end I may produce a professional compliation of these ideas.

As you may know, CUBASE starts developing an application to produce music remotely. That's the future. And if you have a look @world..........there are such a huge amount of resources we may use..........it's a large common ground to start from. But nobody can image what the outcome will be. Frankly, I will follow this jam very closely. It will have multiple effects on our world of tomorrow.

Go ahead! "AS YOU LIKE IT"
Andreas

Permalink Reply by Carsten Trotzkowski on May 24, 2008 at 12:45am

I tested "www.ejamming.com" about a year ago.
They already have a working online platform for world wide realtime jamming, so if you like it you won't have to wait for holy St.einberg to make a new product.

When I tested it then, a very fast DSL had been prereq. (6Mbit upwards) to keep latency inside music compatibility boundaries (it's not everybody's business to play his part an 8th note ahead of the beat). As I heard, today they have an improved re-replay feature for slower lines, but I can't tell if this is a solution.

Permalink Reply by Carsten Trotzkowski on May 25, 2008 at 8:55pm

@Marco: Although I can agree to most of your statements to a certain degree, still I think they somehow belong to the traditional way of music production: A producer lines out a framework and establishes a goal (step 0), the songwriter takes his idea to a community like his band (step 1), they make a song in one or more versions (step 2), and in the end the producer or band leader cuts it back to what will fit the market (step 3).
Alas, here I think we are not only taking this traditional process to a virtual platform, but we are having something different: A community that works with less limitations and sets up own individual goals, in multiple ways, in different and fluctuating directions.

First of all - step 0 is completely left out here. Besides the lyrics (which are not a true "constant" in our equation), there is no limits to style, composition, band members, cultural adherence etc. Everything is possible (though not likely), but who knows what surprises will enter next?.

Up to now, the founders of the project avoided to give it a fixed direction from the artist's values. And since everyone offers his ideas for somehow "uncontrolled" reuse within (!) the project (from his point of view uncontrolled), he is not for sure the one to cut back all step 2 activities to step 3, and for the completed draft, there is no producer to take control immediately - the decision makers can wait for the next evolution cycle of the idea and see if it has improved. Meanwhile, they use the online audience to have feedback from the market - right during production!

With a community like this, we will have to live these processes recursively.
Unlike in the Open Source programming, where not everyone is practically able to recode e.g. the IP-stack of LINUX, in our project it could happen: Mutually every member of the community could take ANY idea at any stage of the steps (as long as they are uploaded), put them into Audacity (or whatever is installed) and change it to someting utterly different, giving it a new direction, and re-entering his output at any step level 1-3.

Indeed, I personally can imagine a community in all 3 of your levels.
Nevertheless, step 2 is the most probable one for group members adding their content and ideas or skills. Not everyone is a songswriter.

Still I reckon there will be additionally:
0) In step 0: Discussions on outlines what the aim of a composition should be, at whom it should be aimed, how the lyrics should be used etc. (e.g. is Punk Rock the right (or the only) solution for "The Perpetrator" - what should a substitute be like to fit into the big picture?)

1) In step 1: I'm still hoping for once in a lifetime, there comes another songwriter that helps me building the crystallisation point of an idea. If one songwriter is good at melody, the other could be better at harmonies... (guess why Lennon/McCartney had sooo many world hits...)

3) In step 3: I think we will have to take into account there may be different branches of one idea that become independent.
E.g. if you compare the original Uli S. unplugged version of "Good Hopes" with my mutated musical style sugarpot version: Although both using the same melody and chords, they both could be a starting point for new developements. One songwriter could build another draft addicted to the unplugged style, the other may make the musical to a true classical opera.

That's what I mean by a recursive process. In the end, our sponsors and Musical Directors will have to decide which branch will be taken to the end production. Maybe they will have to produce several CD's: "Songs of Good Hope", "Rock of Good Hope", "Jazz of Good Hope", "Classic of Good Hope", "Rave of Good Hope", "Silence of Good Hope", "Jodel of Good Hope" ....

OK, ok - in the end HdM may promote a dissertation / doctorate on the new methods of interactive music production - or they already have done:

And they are watching us "as some with a microscope that studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. And yet, minds immeasurably superior to us regarded our work with envious eyes. And slowly, and surely, they drew their plans against us. (Schrumm-schrumm-Schruuuuum..)" (see: Waynes/Wells "War of the Worlds"). :-)))))))))))))

Permalink Reply by Brian McDonald on June 24, 2008 at 8:28pm

Great points Dieter. There are so many things at play here and we have but to choose the paths we can take for each invention. I have a good friend, a drummer from Ghana that speaks more in social terms as music seems to be in great part to him interactive and live, something that moves and constantly changes during performance like a conversation. Contrast that with Mozart streaming wonderful harmonies and melodies from his head through his pen to the paper, which is then picked up and interpreted by an orchestra, or reborn in part as an altered movie soundtrack or pop song. Or Lennon/McCartney writing in sections "John, I have the verse and chorus, but I need a 'middle eight'.

An online community will be as diverse as all of the above and more. Nothing is really "virtual" in music, it is all real. Soundwaves and words in combinations in space and time hitting people's souls and resonating with their wiring and complex patterns developed intricately and over the course of their lives from the day they came into this world. And for some this can happen without soundwaves at all, the symphony can be completely and/or partially internalized within the brain/central nervous system, and spirit.

You hit such a great point when you say "nobody can predict what happens - but I believe in great results." Nicely said.

And I might add, who is really playing and working "alone" in reality - what appears to you as one may in time, in other space, in thought and feeling of so many individuals and groups, become something completely different and wonderful. One to many, many to one, many to many.

Cheers,
Brian

Permalink Reply by Dieter Huober on June 25, 2008 at 2:19pm

Hi Brian, thanks for your wonderful comments!!!

I really think the conversation about the MusicJam is as well interesting as the results - the songs. And I feel it is very important to discuss what we are doing - last but not least to make it clear for us.

Your Mozar/Ghana & Lennon/McCartny examples are really great - it helps very much to make clear: there are many ways to create songs -- and there is no "wrong or right" as longs as you find a way to get results.

Siyabonga!
Dieter