Quarantine remote collaborations

swingbooty

The idea to collaborate remotely from our homes came from no longer being able to have our gypsy jams on Thursdays. We chose "I Can't Give You Anything But Love and 17 musicians drop-boxed their contributions –audio and video. We created a playback first and shared it with all the participants. Remote collaborations are nothing new.. I've never done any because... why would I? LOL The irony is being compelled to work remotely and then getting tremendous satisfaction from the experience. Well, it came out tonight on youtube. Check it out ...and if you've done or. listened to similar projects please post the URL in the comments section.

https://youtu.be/55n1Y-E4Kds

delb0y

Nice work. A friend and me have done something similar - though we've never actually played together. We've been talking about getting together for some time but it never happened. Spookily, the Coronvirus lock-down actually helped in this regard as evenings we're now stuck for something to do so we decided we'd start our little project virtually. I'm no GJ player - although I'm trying, and it was shortly after this that I broke my guitar's neck, so our second installment (which is, also spookily, "I Can't Give You Anything But Love") I play on a dreadnaught. We will feature a bassist on future installments, but for our first go it was just the two of us.

https://youtu.be/89MHRSezx6c

Regards

Derek

delb0y

We've now done the second one mentioned above. Great fun and a relief to still be able to "play" with people.

https://youtu.be/kJ62U_Wbj4o

pmg

So cool and appropriate for solving the SIP trauma we're all going through - bravo guys and gals for getting this going!!!

So can you share more about how you are creating them as I would like to do some with my buddies who are stuck at home??? These look like fun – but I am sure that is a lot unseen work to put them together.

Do you start with an arrangement and then send around a click track to everyone? What recording best practices do you follow?

How do you combine them in your nice multi-screen formats and produce a final video?

How much time does it take to produce one of these videos?

BillDaCostaWilliams

Yes, people want to know!

delb0y

Our process is simple - decide on a song and either Chris (the other guitarist) or I lay down a rhythm track. Whoever's doing that will decide on BPM and whether or not to include any stops, or clever arrangements (we avoid this). This initial rhythm track is recorded and filmed using whatever the individual's preferred means is.

I do my audio direct into the laptop via a Samson USB mic into an old version of Sonar X1 (Cakewalk). I film on a Panasonic camera. I know Chris uses Audacity for the sound, and Andy (on the bass) simply did it on an iPad.

The audio track is then shared via Dropbox and loaded into our respective DAWs and the second guitar track / bass is added and, again, filmed. These files are shared on Dropbox.

We then agree on who's soloing where and the above process is repeated to build up the solos.

When all the individual tracks are recorded and filmed I pass all responsibility to Chris who does a final audio mix in Audacity and then builds a video using OpenShot Video Editor, which is a free Opensource editor I believe. Chris is retired and enjoys this aspect of the process - no idea how long it takes him.

It's an easy methodology especially given plenty of time - which we have at the moment. It's hard to play off one another as the solos are done in isolation - although the second soloist will have the first solos in place before he records his.

I've never played with Chris or even met, or spoken to Andy - only met him because he saw the first video and asked if he could join in the fun (we're re-doing SGB with him on the double bass), but who knows, when all of this is over and music is live again we may well get together for real. Which scares the pants off me!!

Regards

Derek