Long distance collaborating.

[chapperz66]

a lot of folk like to have the individual tracks in wav format.

How do you synchronise with wav files?  Do you put a couple of bars of click track intro at the start?  Or do you work by simply adding some other instrumentation/singing over the top of what someone else has done?

The way I have worked with my friends has been one person starts the process by programming a drum track and playing a couple of guitar rhythm tracks and posting that to me as a stereo pair (with click track intro) to add keyboards/guitar.  I do a number of submixes of my additions and send several stereo pairs back on cd to the first guy.  He synchs them up in his machine with his original tracks, mixes again and sends a stereo pair on a cd to the third person for bass/voxs.  He sends them back as separate tracks each with the click track intro for first guy to load and do a final mix.

This is obviously a lot more complicated but works because of the various recorders that we have, and the fact that person one above refuses to get involved with computers.  He's a Luddite with a Roland VS2480(!)

Paul

[Oldrottenhead]

usually collabs i do are vocal collabs, so i am singing over a track with a rhythm track on it.

if its instruments there is usually a click track or drumtrack on the song we are collaborating on. although that wont necessarily be the final drum track. as we generally all use mbrs. we use the original track to play from so any parts we send are the same length as the entire piece and the should sit exactly in sync. sometimes things go out of sync because someone has snipped of a bit at the beginning or whatever, but if you import the track into cubase you can see the wav file and its pretty easy to see where it sits to line it up.

also using mbr everyones machine has to be running at the same bpm as 1st track being used. i original track is at 120bpm and i record my part with my mbr at 130bpm even though song isnt faster its still playing at speed it was recorded, and i then mail my part back it can sometimes go slightly out of synch but i dont know why this happens.

but synching is generally never an issue unless somewhere along the line a song is trimmed and people are recording to different versions.

[Oldrottenhead]

dont think i explained very well.
in jemimas kite , tim will send us a song, with just drums and rhythm guitar say. i will do a lead vocal and maybe backing vocals. mike will do a bass guitar track and tim will then do a lead and maybe add additional vocals or sound effects. but everything in the process is done to tim's original track.

then any one of us can mix the song.

even tims original drum track can be removed and mike who has an electronic kit can add a live drum track to the song replacing the existing track.

on one song i sang over a drumtrack on my alesis sr16 nd all the music was added afterwards thank god i sang in tune. but like i said if you all sing from the same hymn sheet so to speak, syncing is never an issue

[launched]

How do you synchronise with wav files?  Do you put a couple of bars of click track intro at the start?  Or do you work by simply adding some other instrumentation/singing over the top of what someone else has done?

Jim is right, if the rhythm/click/intro, etc has been established everything should be fine for the "next" guy as long as the additional recordings are started from the beginning, basically recording the silence at the beginning while playing with the original tracks. That way when the wav files are handed off to the next person, they should load into most recorders and DAW's without having to sync them. The "silence" can be cut out later. It is nice to know the tempo of the song, though - I like to listen to a click track when recording if there are no drums yet, especially.

And, yes wav's are the best I think, but the initial swapping around during the collaboration process is best done with 192kbps or better mp3's. Then when everyone is satisfied with what they have done, get the wav files to the engineer of the group.

[launched]

What's a Luddite? 

[Oldrottenhead]

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Luddites

[launched]

Nice, I've been trying to avoid technology lately, but it's so damn tough!

Ned Ludd, an 18th-century Leicestershire workman, who destroyed industrial machinery

Now that's songmaking material!!

[chapperz66]

Thanks for that chaps, I begin to understand now!  I've read the wav file section of the manual several times but since I could never work out how the synching might work, I never bothered with it.  We just carried on using the audio CD and manual synching method.  I'll have to try to convince my PCphobic mate to try this method.

Paul

[Oldrottenhead]

recently during the zappafest , mark (launched) came up with a great method of collaborating, by sending the song folder. whoever started the song say with drums and bass would rar the folder then post it on skydrive and we would unrar it and transfer the songfolder to our microbrs so we where all doing our seperate parts from the same template. then all the individual wavs where sent to geir for mixing and mastering. im sure mark can explain it better.

you can only do this with a couple of tracks on the song say bass and rythm guitar as it gets to large to upload to skydrive with more tracks.

[T.C. Elliott]

What's a Luddite? 

I'd answer you, but I hate these damned new fangled computation devices. Who needs em?


re: collabing. I use WAV files or mp3 files (prefer WAV.) - Gmail is free and will allow you to send up to a 25mb attachment (or up to 25mb with multiple attachments) which makes it easy to send a track at a time.
Lining up the tracks... I do it in reaper which sucks, but have had a lot of luck just sending a track, having someone record a separate track while listening to the first and having that track sent back. usually lines up great.