Top collaboration tips

Stuck at home? You’re certainly not alone. It’s time to get out and meet people – at least virtually – and make some music!

USE REMOTE STORAGE

High-quality stereo audio files can be a hassle to send back and forth over the net due to their large size. If you change one part, you could just resend that bit, but it gets confusing fast, as the recipient loses track of what’s going on.

Avoid all this hassle by using a service such as Dropbox to keep projects in sync across multiple machines and users. The default free allowance is usually enough for one project.

BOUNCE WET AND DRY

When you’re bouncing a channel with huge amounts of reverb or delay, it’s usually worth bouncing a version without those heavy effects as well. These kinds of things can, of course, be very subjective indeed. And it’s also easy for somebody to get frustrated with a part – and even start to dislike it – if they can’t adjust it or even hear a dry version.

WATCH THE LEVELS

When bouncing channels, be careful not to overdrive either the master output or the input levels into any plugins, as this can result in digital clipping and a different response from the plugins respectively.

GIVE IT A CHANCE

If somebody suggests a change to something you’re used to hearing, it can be extremely difficult to view the new version as anything but inferior.

To banish this problem, try living with the change they’ve suggested for a day or so, working on the track with it in. We’re not saying that they’ll always be right, but sometimes you need to let things bed in before you can be objective about them.

SPECIFY A FORMAT