Recording in the time of Corona - isolated collaboration methods

[nickmew]

Hi all

as pretty much everyone is locked up at home, getting stuff done is awkward and collaboration is tricky. It's one thing to play around with various consumer apps out there but doing stuff to a higher degree needs a little more thought.

Obviously people having gear is important - a mic, an interface, a PC / laptop - but these are the basics. It’s the workflow that is the trick. If you're going to record something properly then you need the minimum friction for creativity. You're not going to be able to play together for a few weeks, or possibly months, so lets' get to it. So I thought I'd put down a few principles I think may work - and apologies if this is either a) old ground b) not robust enough or c) way behind the curve - this is from an amateur trying to work through it.

1 )        What are you going to do? Agree this up front. There is no point in embarking on some 2 hour orchestral-prog-rock-jam extravanganza if you haven't worked at least something out upfront. Or maybe there is, but I'm a mere mortal. Use the tools available to work this out;

• Phone. Old school, but...
• Email. You know. Like texts or twitter but bigger.
• https://www.skype.com/en/ it's been around for ages, works and is pretty secure. You can do video calls, schedule meetings etc
• https://www.whatsapp.com/ - though you can't do video on PC , you can on phone (though limited to 4 people), super easy. and can share basic stuff
• Microsoft Teams https://products.office.com/en-US/microsoft-teams/group-chat-software the posh version of Skype. Despite that it points you to Skype if you say you want to use it for personal use, you can setup teams for yourself for free. It has the advantage of an integrated chat / sharing / video and audio conferencing tool in one place. However having just done a teams call with at least 3 IT professionals, one of whom is a technical architect and we were still working out the wrinkles, not for the faint-hearted.
• https://zoom.us/ - I do slightly hesitate to recommend this. It is free, easy, ultra convenient, and works well. It also has been classed as malware by Apple and leaks data like a sieve. You pays your money and you takes your choice..

2 a)      How are you going to share. Possibly the most tricky of them all. We're not talking about can I share a GIF, or a 20 second TikTok video, we are talking about potentially Gb of audio files and a project file holding this all together, which if corrupted screws the whole thing up. The other thing you want is some form of automation - if it's changed, sort it out. I don't want to track this if I don't have to. There are plenty of options around, but probably the obvious ones are the main file sharing ones;

• https://www.dropbox.com/ lots of people use it, myself included, and was one of the earlier big players. Advantage - trustworthy, works. BIG Disadvantage - when you share your folders, those you share with have to use the SAME amount of space AGAIN. The buggers are double charging you.
• https://onedrive.live.com/ lots of people use it, trustworthy and works. DOESN'T require doubling on storage like dropbox - when you share your storage, you are sharing it, as far as I can tell.
• Any other of the millions available. I just mention the two above as the most prevalent. I’m not getting into iCloud mac stuff, because I have limited time.

2 b)      How am I going to schedule the sharing. Don’t think that just setting your default project save folder to a Dropbox folder will sort it. It might do. It might also break your recording session as Dropbox decides it’s the right time to lock that file you’re using, or take a copy of the WAV that is mid write. It probably won’t until the write is completed, but risking that perfect take?

2 c)      How am I going to schedule that recording. All very well if I’m riffing the bass, but what if the lead guitarist is ripping his solo the same night, and then Dropbox / OneDrive / whatever has three versions of the project file to work out, Or corrupt, most likely.

2 d)      Because of all of the above, I would not recommend using synced folders – whatever tool you use – as the place your DAW saves. We’ve tried it. It can work, but it’s a bit ropey. What I would recommend is have a working folder – apart from the rest of the various magnum opus’ you have brewing – for just the stuff you’re collaborating on. And do the following

·         Agree who’s working on songs on what nights to avoid conflicts

·         Make sure you share updates you’ve done on whatever social media you decide upon, so people know when they need to look for new stuff

·         Have a semi-religious process of copying stuff either from the synced folder to your working folder, or the other way, based on the above

·         Remember you are only copying changes. So that 45gb orchestral piece breaks down to just a Mb for the 2 second overdub you did. Windows is reasonably good at asking if you want to replace everything or not.

SUBNOTE – make sure your damn computer has a synced system time (see replace CMOS battery for old school)

BTW – anyone with hints / macros to automate the changed stuff copy process – please add.

3 )        So what are you recording on? I’m not going to talk about mics, audio interfaces etc but just DAWs. You can all work in different DAWs, export stems and import them and repeat the process ad-nauseum, but who want’s that tedium? Use the same damn thing.

3 a)      For Windows users I’ll make it simple. Use Cakewalk. https://www.bandlab.com/products/cakewalk

            I may be slightly biased as I’ve used this since the nineties, but it is a Pro level DAW that does everything Pro Tools, Cubase, Studio One etc does and is FREE!

            If you’re into live performance looping, Abelton / Bitwig / FL it may not be your bag – though it still does looping / samples well – but as a band recording tool it has everything you need, including a bundle of thrown in synths, plugins, Melodyne integration etc. Remember that until Gibson (the owners) shuttered it at the end of 2017 this cost around £400 a pop, and since Bandlab picked it up if anything there have been more updates – including features.

            Obviously, if you all already have your own DAWs, and love them, and can persuade the rest of your band members to buy and love them, go ahead. But Cakewalk is a serious piece of kit, a very similar workflow to others, so what’s to loose?

3 b)      For Mac users – erm… Suggestions please. I just haven’t regularly used Mac specific software recently. I have Studio One, which I like, I have Cubase, which I hate, I have Pro Tools, which I meh. All cost big money to get the versions to do proper stuff on. I’m not anti Mac at all – just Cakewalk is free but Windows only, and I’m used to it.

3 a/b subnote) - whatever you use, don't add your favourite plugins only you have whilst recording. That will just annoy everyone else

3 c)      Whatever DAW you’re using you need to understand its storage. I know Cakewalk.

            There is a default project folder, and one change  to the default setting https://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=SONAR X3&language=3&help=FileManagement.6.html will make it create a new subfolder for each new project (song). Within this there will be a project file – what ties it all together – possibly some auto-save versions of it, depending on your auto save options – and an ‘audio’ subfolder where all your takes are stored: uniquely named and non-destructively dealt with, so if the singer deletes your bassline from the mix the take will still be there.

4)         This all dictates the workflow:

            i) John starts a new song. He saves this as ‘My Masterpiece’ in the project folder. This creates a project file ‘My Masterpiece.cwp’ in the subfolder ‘My Masterpiece’, and in a subfolder of this called ‘Audio’ the files ‘Widdly Solo take 1’, ‘Widdly Solo take 2’, ‘Widdly Solo take 3’ etc etc.

            John tells Terry his masterpiece is ready to work on, and copies the entire ‘My Masterpiece’ folder to his Dropbox / Onedrive / whatever synced folder.

            ii) After Terry’s Dropbox (or whatever) tells him it’s up to date, Terry copies the ‘My Masterpiece’ folder from his Dropbox folder to the project folder on his PC. Terry spends the day recording funk bass lines under John’s Widdly Solo

            Terry finishes, and copies back the ‘My Masterpiece’ folder to his DropBox folder, telling the copy to skip all the identical files – so the only files that are replaced – and then synced back to John – are the ‘My Masterpiece.cwp’ project file and the new audio files in the Audio subfolder called ‘funky bass take 1’, funky bass take 2’, ‘weird noises with a kazoo take 1’

            iii) After John’s dropbox tells him it’s up to date, John copies this back to his folder, listens back and sacks Terry from the band as a ten minute kazoo solo is just ‘not the direction we were headed in, man’

This is not an ideal workflow, but it works, and doesn’t break things mid-recording. If you want to be simultaneously working on the same thing, there are probably more clever ways of doing this, but I thought I’d put this up as a starter for everyone else in the same situation.

 

[nickmew]

One glaring omission in this - you have to make sure you share whatever folders you are using to sync across all the members of the band. 

For Onedrive instructions here : https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/add-and-sync-shared-folders-to-onedrive-8a63cd47-1526-4cd8-bd09-ee3f9bfc1504

For Dropbox here : https://help.dropbox.com/files-folders/share

 

[Dad3353]

Good Stuff, Nick, and 'Well Done' for taking this initiative. I've no intention (nor the ability...) of starting a virtual band, but I can see the advantages of sharing stuff well enough (I might have been tempted if our Singer wasn't quite so technophobe, though...).
I'll just make one, slightly derogatory, remark concerning Cakewalk. I'll not deny its usefulness nor fitness for purpose for Mortals, but (and now I have to reveal the naked truth and heart of the problem...) I'm old. I followed the link, and 'installed' it. Silly me, thinking it'd install summit on my PC, which I looked for, but couldn't find (obviously; there's nowt...). To get that far, even, I had to 'log in', which wrought more confusion, as the System has better memory than I, and I learned that I had already set this process off in 2018, and have had it available since. Much good it did me at the time, and little more today, as I still don't know how it works. 'Back then', I had apparently managed to 'save' a Project, with a couple of lines of Brass, but when I look a bit closer at it, it fell very far short of features that I currently use through my present DAW on my PC.
I'll not go into the pro's and con's of each DAW, but have serious doubts concerning any possibility of me composing through Cakewalk. I'm certain that others manage to do fine work with it, but it seems to need a specific 'mind-set' to be able to do stuff along those lines.
Have I any better suggestion..? As a DAW, absolutely, but how effective it would be for this collaborative methodology is outside of my experience, so... Just to say, then, that if this works for you, and others, that's fine, but it may not suite everyone; it's rather 'odd' in its organisation.
I may well be alone in this, and perhaps too harsh, so I'll be well pleased if others chip in to totally contradict me, and will humbly accept the heaps of 'that old duffer' I'd rightly deserve in that case. I'll be following along, to see how this goes forward; meanwhile...

Keep well, stay safe

[nickmew]

Thanks for taking the time to read. I'd genuinely be interested in what features / lack of were the barrier for you in Cakewalk. The method of working for sharing and collaborating should more or less work with other DAWs anyway.

From my own experience, I think with DAWs everyone has their own preference, and different flavours suit different jobs. When Gibson shut down Cakewalk I - and many others who were in the same situation - went and tried the pro level DAWs of various ilks and found some bits of others are better, some bits of others are worse, and it depends on the use case. The biggest barrier is knowing what the workflow is in each tool, and whether it can work for you. What you may think is missing functionality could just be hidden away in an inconvenient tool / menu option or shortcut. And I found this with other DAWs; Cubase - which I don't think anyone would deny is a good tool - just jarred with what I wanted to do, the learning curve meant most of the time I couldn't get anything done - not because it didn't have the features, I just couldn't easily find them. Pro-Tools didn't offer me anything better and was just shifting onto expensive subscription models which I tend to dislike. Studio One I like as it has a similar workflow, some processes were slicker, and for composing it has integration with Notion. For a while I used this exclusively, but often when I found a snazzy tool I went back to Cakewalk and realised it had already been there for years, I just hadn't been following the release notes. Ableton, FL Studio, Bitwig and other such are just not my bag - they are aimed at a different mindset and purpose. I too have my own inertia for learning something too different.

If you're doing primarily midi with a lot of loop based music, or doing composing through notation, Cakewalk probably isn't the best tool, that's not it's bag. For mixed band type recordings, I find it no better or worse in terms of features or function than the rest of the bunch of general purpose DAWs out there. I just know it better than most.

And I think if you know a DAW and it works, stick with it. Do music 🙂

[Richard R]

Thanks Nick. Very comprehensive, if a little complicated for my bands.

For lo-fi fun Acapella is a phone app that lets people record independently and the  the app stitches them together and produces a video. But you wouldn't release the results commercially. 🤣

[Erax Sound]

There are other ways. I'm recording people remotely using Steinberg VST connect. It's free to use for the person being recorded. The engineer needs Cubase (which I have) and once the files are sent as they are recorded.

If anyone is interested in recording in real time as nobody can go to a studio, I'm happy to facilitate this for you.

[lowdown]

4 hours ago, Erax Sound said:

There are other ways. I'm recording people remotely using Steinberg VST connect. It's free to use for the person being recorded. The engineer needs Cubase (which I have) and once the files are sent as they are recorded.

If anyone is interested in recording in real time as nobody can go to a studio, I'm happy to facilitate this for you.

Works great. I'm using VST connect pro with another composer/arranger. We have a lot of midi info going back and forth as well (we both use Nuendo). But like you said, it can be used with just one person using the DAW and the musicians at the other end using VST connect performer. (Link below, it's free). 

https://www.steinberg.net/en/products/vst/vst_connect/vst_connect_performer.html

 

It's defiantly worth checking this out with 'Erax Sound'. 

👍

Edited April 6, 2020 by lowdown

[Sharkfinger]

I'm unlikey to need this but I wanted to say thanks for taking the time and care in putting this together.