Online Collaboration feasibility

Fingers Mcginty

Howdy folks, Used to be in a band a few years ago and we recorded some originals. They are very catchy tunes if I may say so but the recording quality was not the best and far from professional. I'm just wondering how feasible it would be for me to record my guitar part through Audacity seen as it's free and then send it to him so he can record his vocal line and he knows some guys who can put down bass and drums also. Whatchall think? He would also have to be using Audacity as well I presume???

dyer

its probably doable. i think id start off with putting down a drum track first so you all have something to work off, regards timing etc. im saying that because it could be much harder to keep the mix cohesive if youre all just jamming along to different parts and trying to lump it all together at the end. you could use a looped drum sample to keep you on time and replace that with a drum track later, at the very least work out the songs tempo and record with a metronome if you cant do that (some DAW's have one built in). knowing the tempo and time signature will help alot in fitting the seperate tracks together later on. the individual tracks should be exported to WAV so its not so important that you all use the same program. none of the recordings should clip excessively either, so make sure you all record within a decent level and that you dont overload the signal as theres not much mastering can do to save a distorted recording. this is a very in depth topic in many respects and im only just scratching the surface.. g'luck on your endeavour

Fingers Mcginty

Cheers mate...just to reiterate we have been in a band together We have almost 20 decent songs off and so the signatures and all that stuff are worked out already. I will be recording my geetar to a click track anyway and hopefully I'll be able to send him the audacity file with the guitar track and the click track in a multitrack layout so he can just add another few tracks and send it back to me. Anyone know I decent upload site I can send the file to so he can download?

TelePaul

This is something that's very doable in theory but is a lot trickier in practice. It all depends on your level of expectation. Going direct to audacity means things will be a little 'rough and ready' from the outset, and given that you'll all be tracking separately, you can most likely wave goodbye to consistency or production values

I reckon it'll be a bit of fun, especially if you're assuming the role of session manager and this is your first foray into mixing. Box.net is a good hosting site. You won't all necessarily have to use audacity, if you have the individual .wav files you can track and mix in any sequencer.

brettzy

Sorry of pimping but have you seen www.emeraz.com? Gives you a great platform for collaborating and allows other people to get involved to help you polish it off

PaulBrewer

Fingers Mcginty wrote: »

Howdy folks, Used to be in a band a few years ago and we recorded some originals. They are very catchy tunes if I may say so but the recording quality was not the best and far from professional. I'm just wondering how feasible it would be for me to record my guitar part through Audacity seen as it's free and then send it to him so he can record his vocal line and he knows some guys who can put down bass and drums also. Whatchall think? He would also have to be using Audacity as well I presume???

There's no technical reason why you can't - in fact it's a very common way to work.

Not applicable to your scenario directly, but a lot of session musos have their own recording space. I know one guy who does a lot of Country music who makes a backing track then sends it to various players in the US who overdub parts. He then selects what he wants from that to make the Master.

The DAW is really immaterial - Audacity would be fine I'm sure.