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You are here: Electronic Musician » Tutorials » The World Is Your Workstation

The World Is Your Workstation

Oct 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Marty Cutler

Online collaboration services let you work with anyone, anywhere.

The Electronic Century Part 4

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Although i-Studio.net (see Fig. 5) offers the least frills of the services I looked at, it gives you access to plenty of top-shelf players, which is its primary mission. You may recognize several of the names involved in it from the popular Discrete Drums sound libraries. In fact, i-Studio.net is a spin-off of Discrete Drums, and now even offers custom sessions set up in the same multitrack arrangement as the original sound library.

FIG. 5: One of the player profiles at i-Studio.net, a service that doesn’t offer a lot of extras but has a stable of solid studio players that you can hire.

The elite team of players at i-Studio.net have worked with an impressive list of artists, including John Lennon, Johnny Rotten, Pat Metheny, and Bob Dylan. The musicians ply their trade at select studios in New York, Los Angeles, and Nashville. This limited set of recording facilities ensures a consistent level of quality from project to project. At the i-Studio.net site, you can listen to MP3 demos of the various musicians' work to help you determine whether they're right for your project. The musicians start with a negotiable base fee of $250 for a three-hour recording session, and will record multiple takes for you within that time frame.

At DMN and eJamming I recognized fewer high-profile players, but you can choose from a menu of musicians from around the world to collaborate or jam with. The DMN home page lists projects, musicians in search of other musicians, special DMN events, the latest forum posts, and more. Projects can be free and completely open to participation, or closed sessions with a wide range of fees offered by the Administrator, who can be the owner of the project or a participant designated to grant access to the files. Because DMN is more global in scope, I found not only pianists, drummers, guitarists, and bassists to play rock and pop, but also banjoists, accordionists, and mandolinists looking to play progressive bluegrass and fusion (my musical styles of choice). This more eclectic approach can be useful when you are looking for less conventional instrumentalists, although it is advisable to audition potential collaborators' MP3s first, to make sure you are on the same page, musically speaking.

Indaba Music boasts a membership of around 5,000 (about 25 percent of which are from outside the United States), and the site's extensive social-networking facilities make it easy to find and audition potential collaborators. You can ask any of the members to play on your project, or keep your session totally private. “We give the session owner complete control over who can download which files, and who they let into the session,” says cofounder Matt Siegel.

With every service except i-Studio.net, you have the option of bringing in musicians who are not signed up with the group, either by recruiting them as new members or by granting them temporary access to your files on the company's server. With a paid Studio account, DMN lets you set up as many as seven subaccounts for nonregistered musical collaborators.

Into the Fray

My eSession project (see Web Clips 2 through 4) started with a MIDI arrangement of a spooky old modal mountain tune whose general melodic contours were easily adaptable to a modern electronic arrangement reminiscent of Weather Report — at least, that's what I had in my mind's eye. Fortunately, I found my old friends and collaborators Jimi Tunnell (guitar) and Jeff Ganz (bass) on eSession, and was able to negotiate a very reasonable fee. Because they were familiar with my eclectic mind-set, we were able to hash out the details of the arrangement quickly.

Each musician worked with three reference files: an MP3 of a full arrangement, an MP3 with its instrumentation stripped down to the basic rhythm-section instruments, and a 24-bit, 48 kHz stereo stripped-down mix of the track minus their particular instrument. We then sent suggestions back and forth either through phone calls, email, or the eSession chat application and fleshed out the details. We were not set up for a simultaneous online recording session, and I preferred to give my collaborators time with their ideas without pressure, so this method suited me perfectly (see Web Clip 5).

Despite the best of intentions, it's impossible to account for every individual musician's computer configuration, and collaboration through a Web browser can add a few layers of complexity. Don't be surprised by the odd hurdle here and there. Everything else being perfect, I found that my browser (Netscape on my PC) was not fully supported by eSession. It was an easily remedied problem (I downloaded a new browser), but it underscored the need for patience, a modicum of Web savvy, and a bit of research into the system requirements of the service that you choose.

A problem occurred when one of my Stem Bank files was inadvertently clocked to 44.1 instead of 48 kHz. This is where online collaboration shines. As soon as I discovered the problem, I converted the problematic track to 48 kHz, re-uploaded it, and deleted the original. In all, correcting the problem and getting the new file online took ten minutes — compare that with the best overnight delivery offered by your favorite carrier.

In another instance, one of my collaborators could not get my files to play back at the right pitch or tempo. Of course, this was another word-clock problem (for more on word-clock issues, see “Timing Is Everything” in the August 2007 issue of EM, available at www.emusician.com), and eSession's technical support was able to track it down to an incompatible word-clock setting in my partner's preamp.

Connectivity problems can be hard to troubleshoot. For example, one collaborator couldn't log in to respond to my work request. As it turned out, it was a matter of needing to update Java and Flash applications. Fortunately, eSession's well-informed customer support solved the problem quickly.

Customer support (in the form of email, forums, and sometimes phone support) at the various online collaboration services is generally willing to help you track down problems whether they are due to bugs in their system, browser difficulties, connectivity problems, software or hardware glitches (with the third-party hardware and software in your setup), improperly configured audio drivers, or pilot error. Such support provides a wide-ranging body of knowledge issuing from one source, and it beats having to seek out customer support from the manufacturers of the individual products in your recording chain.

Collaborate, Collaborate

I can't say enough about how Web-based collaboration has helped me to realize ideas that have been in my head for years. I came to this story as a skeptic, and although none of the services are glitch-free, I'm convinced that the benefits of online collaboration outweigh any of its drawbacks.

Most of the services discussed in this article make it extremely easy and inexpensive to jump in and get your feet wet. If you are a composer in need of talent to realize the jingle that is due tomorrow morning, a songwriter up in the wee hours looking to develop the bridge you've just written, or a studio pro looking to find more work, there is sure to be something for you in one of these services. In fact, you'll probably find much more than you anticipated.

Downbeat magazine once labeled Marty Cutler's music as “Eclectically Madcap.” The MP3s from this project proudly substantiate the claim. You can visit his Web site and get in touch at http://web.mac.com/martycutler/.

ONLINE COLLABORATION SERVICES COMPARED

Service	Membership Fee	Fee for Studio Musicians	Online Storage for Audio Files	Session Communication	Real-Time Streaming	Support	Optional Open Collaboration
digitalmusician.net	free, Pro membership from about $13.50/month	optional/negotiated	yes	audiovisual chat via DMR, DML, and DMM software	via DMR and DML software	email, forum, phone	yes
eJamming	free during beta, $9.95/month afterward	optional	no	chat via eJamming AUDiiO	audio only	email, forum	yes
eSession	free	negotiated	250 MB (free) to 150 GB	chat and blogging through Song Page, audiovisual chat via Virtual Glass software (not yet available)	via Virtual Glass software (not yet available)	email, forum, phone, Web conference, video tutorials	no
Indaba Music	free, Pro membership $10/month	optional/negotiated	250 MB (free); Pro: 10 GB	messaging and blogging	no	email	yes
i-Studio.net	N/A	negotiated/suggested base rate $250 (for a 3-hour session)	yes	no	no	email	no
SessionPlayers	$25/year	varies per player; $250 minimum	yes	audiovisual chat via DMR, DML software	via DMR and DML software, Source-Connect	email	no