On collabing

[colortwelve]

Sometimes - scratch that, all the time - I feel like I'm very impatient when it comes to collaborations. I can throw a track together in a day, but when I give it to someone who wants to work with it, I feel like the waiting takes forever (which, unfortunately, has been reinforced by me getting exactly zero work from collaborators so far, even ones whom I had contacted almost a month ago at this point).

But I also feel really bad for being so impatient. I realize that most of the collabs I start end up requiring a lot of work, and I definitely don't want anyone to rush their end, but I feel like I'm always the one that cares more about actually getting something done.

I remember watching the first bit of The Ill.Methodology, specifically the part where .gates talked about doing collaborations to get used to meeting deadlines, saying that 'neither of you want to waste each other's time.' I know that I don't like wasting people's time, but I can't speak for anyone but myself. So I wonder, am I just taking it all too seriously?

[Trillionage]

No your reaction is pretty natural. You want to know what will the other person do/think of what you have done.

[Habanc]

I think this is why Skype should be universal for all producers.

[vladnuke]

Vocals are hard to do right, and you said to wait until you finished with all the other tracks. But seeing as the urgency level has risen, I'll get to work.

[Peak Freak]

I am sorry ;(

[colortwelve]

Oh, no need to apologize, guys. If anything, I feel like apologizing for being so damn impatient

[ChromaticChaosPony]

I'm sorry for not doing my part yet Colortwelve. I screwed up by taking on too many collabs at the same time.

[TheSunAndTheRainfall]

Real life and other projects with deadlines have a way of getting in the way of collabs. Plus, coordinating creative efforts is never easy; your different ways of working and perceiving music are going to clash, and the best you can do is keep an open mind and be patient.

This might as well be my letter to Celestia, because that's a lesson I had to learn the bad way recently.

[MatthewMosierMusic]

Also, it should be noted that many people have different writing styles. Many of my friends can pump out a beautiful song in a matter of hours, like yourself, while it can take me months to get it right. A big part of collaborations is making sure that you and your partner connect and have similar writing styles. Working on a collab is basically like joining a band for a short time, and everyone needs to be working the same angles for it to work, but everyone also has to work around their differences.

Though, its fine to feel impatient. If you think that someone isn't doing their part, let them know. If anything, talking it out will result in postponing till a time when everyone is available to put forth everything they have.
This all being as far as my limited experience has taught me.

[Freewave]

Real life and other projects with deadlines have a way of getting in the way of collabs. Plus, coordinating creative efforts is never easy; your different ways of working and perceiving music are going to clash, and the best you can do is keep an open mind and be patient.

This might as well be my letter to Celestia, because that's a lesson I had to learn the bad way recently.

Agreed, andtherainfall and i have had an open collab for a month+ and its been quite a learning experience for me. He's actually had a very intense and complex collab that's rightly taken precedence over ours and its had a tighter deadline and a lot of work (complextro for a reason).

For ours a lot of it was MY needing to step and get on the same page with him (getting signed up for dropbox which is an essential tool, using skype of course, getting more used to using FL10 and having him help help explain that more to me, and then getting my project setup to match). I had a new pc so getting FL10 loaded, having matching vst's, and still having a few vsts's not load properly when i load the same project file all have been a bit of a delayer of the process. Plus it didn't help to have a week of vacation almost as soon as we started. Good thing is we have open communication and other projects so we know we can go back to the collab when we're at a stage where we have more free time on our hands. TBH its more up to me to confirm that i have a matching FLP now and then put some direction on the track as ATR has done the heavy lifting so far.

My point is that there are a ton of factors going into a collab and its important that when you start you need to have a timeframe established for both of you especially if you prefer a quick turn around, need to make sure your DAW is matching and your experience using that is too. It is much easier for a person to learn a DAW with a project file of course but that only goes so far. If one of the 2 people is using a brand new DAW to them do not expect any type of a quick completion rate i would say although it would be a great learning experience for that person.