Collaborating With Other Musicians Online › smash › get › diva2:... · watching tutorials om...
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Collaborating With Other Musicians OnlineExploring the creative process between collaborators
Emil Högberg
Recording/performing artist, Higher Education Diploma
2020
Luleå University of Technology
Department of Arts, Communication and Education
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Collaborating With Other Musicians online Exploring the creative process between collaborators
Emil Högberg –D0103G essay in Higher Education Diploma Programme as
recording/performing artist | 2020 | tutor: Harri Ihanus
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Table OF contents
Introduction
Background
PurposE
My Experience with collaborationS
MethoD
The process behind making the songs
- me and you (in the afterglow)
- Summer days
- cold nights
- Untold secrets
The Interviews
- n3wport
- triple m
- Jon Madison
- Fenoz
- Hans Brooks
Result
-Interviewees conclusion
-My collaborations
Analyze and compare
Discussion
REFERENCES
Questions I asked
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Introduction
I’m a music producer that is active in several different subgenres in electronic dance
music (EDM). A music producer is a person that oversees the recording process, most
often the creative side and decides how everything should sound like. You can compare
it to a film director. During the last decade, the role as a music producer has progressed
into a factotum position, which means you usually have several different roles yourself:
you can be a songwriter, mixing engineer, recording engineer and even a singer.
Another thing that has changed is the workplace. It’s common nowadays that people are
sitting at home and producing their own beats/songs. This is foremost possible because
of how the technology has evolved and made everything smaller and more efficient. If
you rewind back 25 years this was an impossible task. You needed big studios, with big
rooms to record drums, guitars, keyboards and vocals, and a huge mixing table with big
tape machines to record it all. Nowadays you have everything you need with a laptop,
an audio interface and with access to the internet. You can easily find pre-recorded
vocals, hire vocalists online, buy sample packs with drum loops and make your own
melody sounds with virtual synthesizers. There’re also huge digital libraries with sounds
that real instrumentalists recorded which you can use to create your own chord
progressions or melodies. So, you basically have everything you need to make a big
dance record with only a simple laptop sitting in your own garage in the Bronx. It’s also
easy to get in touch with other artists, producers and singers through social media and
other sites on the web. In my essay I want to explore how the process looks like when
you are collaborating with others online. It could be between other producers, singers,
songwriters or even instrumentalists. How do you start a collab? Are there any pros and
cons with collaborating? I also would like to examine what people do if they are having
trouble getting along while collaborating. How do you maintain a good chemistry with the
others? And if your creative process differs compared to when you are writing music by
yourselves.
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Background
My name is Emil Högberg and I’m a 31 year old man from Sundsvall, Sweden, currently
living in the northern part of Sweden in a town called Piteå. I’m currently studying Higher
Education Diploma Programme as recording/performing artist at Musikhögskolan in
Piteå. I have an artist project called ay-Mill, which is currently focused on a style called
Future House, which is a subgenre of House-music in EDM. Songs within this genre is
normally characterized by a muted / filtered melody with a metallic, elastic-sounding
synthesizer with pitch bends and groovy rhythms. I have been making music for the last
5-6 years now, and most of the stuff that I learned along the way is self-thought or by
watching tutorials om YouTube. I create all my music in a program called FL Studio by
Image-Line. The first time I opened FL Studio was at a friend’s place from my class in
elementary school. At that time, I was only making short loops, and was just playing
around with different sounds. If we fast forward to my time in senior high school when I
was studying Graphic Communications, I started to feel that this isn’t something I’m
passionate about. During my exams I choose to write music instead, since the subject of
choice could be anything. Since then my journey has progressed a lot. I started writing
full songs and started experimenting with different genres. I was always enjoying making
music, but after my graduation I didn’t have enough time nor energy to do music after
my 9 to 5 job. After a few years I decided I wanted to do something else with my life, so I
applied to a pre-college school to study Music Production and Sound Engineering at
Hola Folkhögskola. After spending one year at that school I decided to continue my
journey in Piteå at Musikhögskolan. During my time in Piteå I have learned much about
songwriting, melodies, and mixing. Both from classes at school, sitting at home
producing and talking to other producers on social media. My progression curve has
never been this steep before. The number one thing that I will take away from this, is
that time is the most essential thing. You can learn everything on your own with the
resources internet retains, it’s just easier (for me at least) when you are attending a
university, since you will have way more time and energy than if you would only have
the free time to study after your 9 to 5 job. At least, this is my experience with time
management, I guess it can variate a lot depending on what you are studying.
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purpose
The purpose with this essay is to explore the process behind collaborating with other
musicians online and to explore how the communication and the chemistry between
everyone works. And to see if the creative part differs compared to when you are writing
music on your own.
Questions:
Are there any pros and cons when you are collaborating with others? If so, what?
Does the creative process change when you are working with someone else? If so,
how?
How do you divide the work among all the partakers when it comes to both the creative
and non-creative part of music making?
If disagreements occur in the working process with your collaborator, what do you do?
How to create and maintain a good communication, and how do you interact with each
other?
My Experience With Collaborations
Since I started producing, I have been collaborating with several different artists and
singers. Most of the time it happened quite rapidly and spontaneously. In this genre of
music, it’s quite common that people just send you a message and say, “Collab bro?”.
And often, that isn’t a valid strategy. You want the collab to be beneficial for both parties
and using that line of approach just feels unprofessional. Other times I got to know
people and their music, and we expanded our relationship into something more. The
process usually looks like one person has an idea they want to finish with the other one.
Then the project will be sent between both parties several times back and forth.
Sometimes we have discussions in between to talk about how we want to proceed, but
most of the times we didn’t get any further. The other person stops answering or says
that he/she doesn’t have any time to spend and the project is buried. So, I’m very keen
to know if this has happened to others as well.
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Method
I will be gathering data by interviewing producers, songwriters/singers and mixing
engineers. The way I will be doing this is to send each one a Google sheet document
with ten questions for them to answer. There will both be people with more experience
than me, and similar ones to my progress. My plan is to interview 5 people, so I get
enough data to compare and see the difference between each alignment in the music
business. So, how and why did I pick these persons? Most of them are people I have
gotten to know through social media, and my idea is that it would easier to get answers
by asking someone that I’m acquaintance with, then contacting a bigger artist that might
not answer.
Another part of the exam is to write four new songs and release an EP during this
semester. My plan is that I want to collaborate with other musicians on these songs and
take notes about how our progress goes. I will then be comparing these experiences
and see if and how they differ to others I have done previously. Will we be able to finish
a song? How will our communication look like? To maximize the amount of the data, I
want to find four different people to collaborate with on my songs. I want to focus on
having original vocals on all of these songs and write lyrics together with them.
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The PROCESS behind making the songs
The first song - Me and you (in the afterglow)
This collaboration started with me posting a video on my Instagram page with me asking
what people’s thoughts are on this instrumental idea I was working on. A guy named
Jon Madison commented that he really liked it and wrote to me in private messages and
asked if he could record vocals for it. Jon Madison is a guy I started following on
Instagram for over a year ago and we have been talking quite sporadically since. It’s not
until the beginning of this year we started to talk daily. Not only about music but
basically anything from life in general, cooking and video games. I knew that he is a
great singer and songwriter, so I got instantly excited and I sent him the instrumental
track and all the necessary information which was needed. We started talking about the
lyrics and what kind of feeling we wanted to convey. Since the chords were so emotional
and the drop/chorus had a very low-key arrangement, we wanted the vocals to be
colorful and touching. Jon Madison already had some great ideas, so he started working
immediately. Just after a few days he sent me the first draft which he recorded with his
cellphone. I think the idea fitted perfectly with the instrumental itself and after a few
weeks later I had the recorded vocal sent to me and fully processed. I simply just
adjusted a few things with EQ and Reverb, and we were done. Everything went so fast
with this song and I think this has a lot to do with how great our communication was. We
both knew what the other one wanted to evoke and how we were supposed to do it. Due
to that I think this probably one of the most successful collaboration I have ever had.
Everything went smooth and the communication was clear all the way through. We
could easily discuss things during the whole process, and both be satisfied with the
result. Which I think is the most important thing when it comes to collaborating. I feel
that this song is the launch of many great things. Collaborating with Jon was amazing,
fun and educative. I have found a friend for the rest of my life.
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Summer Days
The Summer Days collaboration started with me sending out the instrumental of an
uplifting, happy, summerish song to Jon Madison for feedback. He instantly loved it and
I asked if he knew someone that could sing on it, and he suggested that he could. I told
him about the idea that I had about a female singer doing the vocals. Since sometimes
you just get a feeling, or an idea of what could work well with the song. Jon mentions
that his sister is a singer as well, and he could ask her if she would be interested. Then I
get the idea of them doing a duet together. Since that is not so common nowadays in
EDM music, I think it would be an amazing opportunity. I asked if they would be
interested in doing that, and a few days later he tells me that they are. After that we start
talking about the title, lyrics and the arrangement. As of right now the song was quite
busy with several elements that are going on at the same time, which makes it hard to
sing on. The listener might get confused and doesn’t know what to focus on. So, Jon
suggested that we make it simpler and make room for the vocals. Then Jon also said
that the chords that I initially had, was hard to sing on, so he suggested that I should
write something simpler like a four-chord loop. After that I wrote a new simpler yet
effective turnaround chord progression that fitted well to the vocals. The next step was
to find a driving element that could help drive the song forward together with the vocals.
Since the theme of the song is summer, I instantly thought about a guitar. We started
testing out some few simple yet effective riffs in our music program, and then I went with
a friend to the studio at Musikhögskolan to recorded it. Today, both Pop music and EDM
is mostly made using only electronic instruments or samples, so to be able to record
your own instruments are an amazing opportunity. Initially when I made the structure of
the song it was quite long, and Jon suggested that we should use a classic pop
arrangement, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, verse, pre-chorus bridge and chorus. But I
didn’t like that and that would mean that we had to make the chorus / drop shorter.
Since otherwise the song would be over five minutes long. I kept the original
arrangement and sent the new version with the new chords and the guitar recording to
Jon and his sister Cherese. One week later I get the first demo recording with Jon
singing all the lyrics, just to show me what the melody sounds like and to show me the
lyrics. My first impression was that he totally nailed it, the lyrics was telling an amazing
story and the melody was so catchy. It wasn’t until two weeks later I had the final
recording sent to me. Jon and Cherese recorded several takes that I could pick from
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and choose which one I liked the most. The next morning, I was listening through each
take and choosing the phrases that I liked the most. I didn’t want to risk my ears getting
to tired, so I only spent a few hours during the whole day, and then I could continue the
next day. Now when I had all the vocals lined up, I could start processing them with
effects. Since I haven’t worked much with vocals before I didn’t have access to the most
effective vocal tuning programs (Autotune). Since there’s a chance with the simpler
programs that the notes will shift in the wrong direction if you put it on automatic pitching
mode. So, to get the best result, I imported all the vocals and was tuning each word by
itself. This was a long and demanding process to both my energy and the endurance of
my ears, After two days of editing I’m finally done, and I can start adding FXs and work
on the levels and the dynamics. The next morning, I finished the first draft and I sent it to
Jon Madison for feedback. He thought I was on the right way, but the vocals needed
more tuning and more clarity. I started working on the tuning processing again and
tweaked some of the levels to achieve more clarity before sent him the next draft. He
said that he could give it a shot and try to make mix them himself. After a few days, or
maybe closer to a week I get a video on Instagram of Jon playing the processed vocals
for me, and it sounds amazing! He really took the processing and quality of the vocals
ten times higher. I decided that we should use his edit of the vocals in the final version
of the song, because it fits better to the quality of the modern sound of today. This song
makes me so happy every time I listen to it. Jon really made an amazing job writing the
lyrics and the vocal melody to match it with the instrumental.
Cold Nights
Cold Nights was an interesting song to make. At first it was a remix that I made for a
remix contest held at Splice. The song was a Future Bass / Pop song which had a vocal
arrangement all the way through. When I was writing this song / instrumental, I had
another happier melody as a chorus and hook, since that fitted well to the vocal at that
time. But when I started planning and working on this EP, I wanted something more
mellow and dusky. I took some parts of the verses and changed the whole chorus / drop
to what it is now. Pitch-bending supersaw chords with aggressive basslines and groovy
drum pattern. I started getting visions of this darker blueish color when I was listening to
the song. Blue ice and coldness were some words that popped up in my mind. I put
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those both feelings together and it became Cold Nights. This is when I got the first idea
about my EP being two sided, one warmer and brighter and the other one colder and
duskier. Instantly I had the feeling of a male vocalist singing over this. Then I heard a
new song by ZHU & NGHTMRE called Man’s First Inhibition with a rap vocal on it. And I
got the idea that I wanted to try something similar as well. Since this EP was a way of
challenging my production skills and to take my songwriting skills to the next level. Why
not try having a rapper on the EP as well? First out I had problems in finding a suitable
rapper that I wanted to collaborate with me. Several of the people that answered didn’t
feel professional nor had the kind of voice I was looking for. Since hip-hop and rapping
isn’t my main genre of music, I can’t really say any name of a rapper that would have
the sound that I was imagining in my head. But some of my producing friends have said
that Jay-Z comes to their mind after they have listened to the song. Then I remembered
that I was following a rapper on Instagram called Kolo from the USA. We hadn’t talked
that much at all before, so I just sent him a message and asked how everything was
going and so on. Then I told him about this project I was working on and I sent him the
instrumental song. He got back to me a few days later and said that he was interested
but he couldn’t record anything for the next two weeks. I had other projects that I
needed to further work on, so I didn’t mind at all. If we fast-forward two weeks, I get a
message from Kolo saying he’s done with the vocals. I open the email as fast as I could,
since I was so excited to hear what he had made. I was literally mind blown; I couldn’t
believe it. I didn’t have any idea about what I was going to hear but this was far beyond
my expectations. His lyrics, the rhythm and the melody in the chorus were all just
staggering. I was so excited, so I wanted to start working immediately. When I got his
recording, the vocal recording wasn’t aligned to the structure of the song, only in the
correct order when it comes to intro, verse, chorus etc. My first step was to place the
vocals how I was imaging he had planned it and what was sounding good. After that I
got the idea of making adlibs (Ad libitum: latin for “at one’s pleasure” or “as you desire”,
generally speaking it means you repeat certain hooks, or phrases to make the vocal
performance sound more exciting.) and some vocal harmonies. Since I only got one
vocal recording from Koto, I cut out some words that stood out to me and processed
them differently and used a vocal pitcher to change the tone of the voice to create a
harmony. Besides that, I worked with Equalizer, Compression, effects like Reverb,
Delay and some more creative effects to make some parts of the song more exciting
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and refreshing. After a few days of work, I was starting to feel good about the progress,
and I wanted to get Kolo’s view of it. I sent him the song and he said it sounded good
except that the rhythm of the vocals during the intro and in the pre-chorus was off beat.
He also said that the chorus line wasn’t placed the way he had set up, but he liked this
way even more. I went back into my project to change the rhythm for the better, but I
couldn’t get it right. It was hard for us to communicate through text messages and to
fully understand each other. So, I sent him the stems and the instrumental of the song
and I let him line it up correctly as he wanted. The intro become so much groovier after
he made the changes to the placement of the vocals. But the vocals during the pre-
chorus wasn’t feeling that convincing to me. During this part of the song, his rapping
was thundering fast, so it’s surely hard to get the timing right. I asked a friend of mine
who’s a producer for a hip-hop group what he thought about the overall sound and
timing of the vocals. He gave me several good advices about EQuing the vocal a bit
more. One of them was to cut the lows of the vocal to make it feel more “inside” the
song or together with the rest of the elements. Then also the timing in the pre-chorus he
felt were too offbeat so I should cut the vocals and adjust them slightly. After that I sent
a new version to Kolo, just to get his opinion and ask if he’s satisfied with the mixing of
his vocals. He said that: “Love this song man. So glad you reached out to me”. And then
I was finished with three out of four songs. The writing and the production process of
this song has been a long journey, mostly due to the massive number of elements
during the verses. But also, the first time I ever have been mixing rap vocals, which has
been a fun and thrilling experience.
Untold secrets
The process of this song has been like a roller coaster. At the start I had an instrumental
song I made several months prior to the start of these exams. This song had a classic
EDM arrangement: intro, break/verse, buildup/pre-chorus, drop which repeats twice.
The breaks had an emotional, ambient mellow vibe and the drop was more towards the
happy side and a bit chaotic when I think about it now. At first a girl from Peru, South
America called Britt Lari was supposed to sing on it. I meet her on Instagram a while
back through a friend that wrote a song with her. We hadn’t talked that much, but we
had a friendly music connection. Sadly, after two weeks we had talked about it, she said
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that she was too busy and won’t be able to record anything. So, then I was in need for a
new vocalist again. I’m a member of several pages on Facebook with singers and
rappers that are looking for producers to collaborate with. It’s a good way to find new
unknown talents you can work with and create music with. I came across a girl called
Christe which is a singer / songwriter, which recently had made a post with a new cover
song she just recorded. I really liked her voice and thought it would fit well to my song. I
wrote her a message and asked if she would be interested in collaborating with me on
this song. She said that she was really liking the song and wanted to do it. But, yet
again, she also dropped out after just a few days. She said she got a payed offer for
doing a vocal recording for another project, so she wanted to priorities that instead.
Time was ticking away and soon I didn’t have any time to find a new vocalist. I jumped
into a site called Splice, where you can get yourself a membership and you will have
access to millions of samples for music making. Everything from drums, live recorded
basslines, synth patches, choirs and foleys. I searched for a female vocal sample that
could represent the feeling and mood that I was looking for so I could use it as a
reference when I was working with a vocalist. Unfortunately, I did not find any other
vocalist in time, so I ended up using the vocal sample instead. Now when I had the
vocal down inside my DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) FL Studio, I could easily adjust
certain things so everything could fit better. The biggest change that I did first was to cut
down the length of the song by making the verses shorter. Because the song would risk
becoming quite tedious otherwise. I also changed the drum sounds during the verses,
because I wanted something more organic and modern than the sounds, I had at first.
At that point, I was satisfied with how the intro and the verses sounded, but I wasn’t
convinced about the drop/chorus. It just felt a bit out of place, and I wanted to
incorporate the vocals somehow, but I could not get it to sound good. The verses were
quite mysterious and dusky, so the switch up to the happy drop did not feel natural for
me. I ended up changing the whole drop to a new mellow sounding darker moody drop.
I could now incorporate the vocals in a good way and tie everything together.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get any chance to collaborate with someone on this song. But I
still think it was a learning experience, both production wise and time management wise.
Next time I will set aside more time to find a real vocalist.
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The Interviews
I interviewed five different people for this project. My thoughts when deciding which
ones to pick were that I wanted people with different traits and skills. I wanted a
combination of more experienced and less experienced people. The ones with more
experience have several releases in their bag, either with a record label or by
themselves and has done multiply collaborations. I wanted to get as much different data
as possible and get more insights about how the collaborations looks like at a higher
level. The first one I’m going to interview is an American Future Bass / Trap producer
called N3wport. He has many collaborations under his sleeve and several million
streams on Spotify and other streaming services. The second one is a Finish Future
House producer called Triple M. He also has several million streams on Spotify and
have done multiple collaboration with other big EDM artists. The third one is an
American singer / songwriter called Jon Madison, which I collaborated with on two of my
songs on the EP. The fourth one is a Canadian producer under the name Fenoz. I got to
know him through my friend Jon Madison, and he’s an insanely good producer in my
eyes. He hasn’t made so many releases yet or focused on marketing to get the streams
going. So, I believed that it would be interesting to hear his thoughts about this matter.
All these guys are people I have gotten to know through social media and our
relationships have expanded into more friendship rather than acquaintanceship. The last
one I’m going to interview is Hans Olsson Brookes, which is a music producer, mixing
engineer and mastering engineer who have worked with several big Swedish artists. I
got in contact with him through my teacher in Sound Engineering here at my university. I
think his thoughts and ideas will be very interesting to hear, if and how it differs from the
rest. Since, he’s from another era of music and has another approach to his
collaborations. Most of the questions I asked was about how and if you are planning
your collaboration. How do you decide which part shall be done by whom? What kind of
benefits can a collaboration give? Do you write a contract or just do a mutual agreement
between each other? What happens if you don’t get along?
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Results
Interviewees
The majority of all the interviewees agreed that there are several pros when
collaborating with others. One thing that everyone mentioned was that there is a big
chance of you gaining new followers and fans because of the wider range your music
sets. Fenoz said: “Yessir, you gain a friend sometimes and you get some attention by
the collaborators fans”.
You will also have two minds overlooking the whole process, which can make it more
effective and thin away bad ideas faster. There’s also a chance you might learn new
skills along the way by watching the work process of the other. Making new friends,
learning to handle positive criticism and increased confident while working with others is
also things that the interviewees brought up. Everyone also said that working with others
is fun and that’s what they all want.
N3wport said: “When Besomorph and I made our track ‘Zombie’, it was fun and I got to
do whatever I wanted for the drop, so I just went crazy and sent it back and he loved it.
It took us about 3 days from start to finish on that track and it’s still crushing it!”
When it comes to cons most of them didn’t have any, except that sometimes they have
heard of people stealing projects from others and using them on their own. But no one
of them have ever experienced this. Triple M said: “There also has to be trust involved.
I’ve heard stories about artists stealing ideas from others. Thankfully, that hasn’t
happened to me.”
Another thing that was mentioned is that when you are collaborating with others the split
of royalties will be lower since it’s shared among the participants. N3wport said: “I would
say another small con is sharing the glory if the track does really well, but hey both of
you earned it, so share with pride! :)”.
By analyzing the interviewees results I can say that the creative process is unique to
each person individually. Everyone has their own way of working and writing music.
Most of the times when someone wants to collaborate with one other, they usually have
an idea that fits the other collaborators music style. Since, it wouldn’t make sense to
send an RnB Pop song to a Future Bass producer. Sometimes it can just be a short idea
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with chords and basic sounds, and sometimes a full song which is close to finished.
Triple M said: “It all depends who I am collaborating with. If I send track idea to big artist,
I usually send them 95% finished song so they get right impression of the track
(meaning the song is fully produced, mixed and mastered, but still has room for the
bigger artist).”
Another topic was that if the collaboration doesn’t go the way you except it to, there is
usually no harm feelings or problems between each other. People are mostly just open
about what they think and tell the other that it’s not working out. If so, it could be that
one of the collaborators will finish it on their own or it will just be buried.
Jon Madison said: “I try to find a middle ground. If I really don’t like it, I’ll ask if we can try
a different sound or tweak the melody slightly. For the most part this doesn’t happen
because I work with talented people.”
To summarize these interviews, I have learned that collaborations are foremost a
positive thing. You will learn a ton about music making, gaining new fans from my
collaborators fanbase, since the music will be shown on their social medias as well. You
will also be having fun and meeting like-minded people. One negative aspect of
collaborations might be that your share of the profits will probably be lower when
collaborating, rather than releasing music on your own.
My collaborations ON THE EP
I experienced that a collaboration can both be rough and time consuming, but the payoff
is worth it. Sometimes we didn’t always agree on how the arrangement should be, for
example in Summer Days I removed all my synth sounds during the verses to make
room for the vocals to let it be the center point. Another scenario is during the mixing
stage of the song Cold Nights, me and Kolo couldn’t agree on how the timing / rhythm of
the vocals should be. Luckily, we could both compromise and meet each other in the
middle. The song You & Me (In The Afterglow) was probably the one song with the
smoothest outcome. Jon basically just wrote the perfect lyrics and melody for the vocals
and made the song beyond great. Sadly, I didn’t get to collaborate with anyone on the
song Untold Secrets, but it was still fun and educative. During this whole process and
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the creation of my EP I made together with my collaborators. I learned so much about
songwriting and gained several good friends along the way. I also learned that by
compromising you can achieve amazing results, even though it can feel a bit recalcitrant
at that time, it’s worth it for the result. I believe the key to great communication was that
we were open and told each other our opinions, thoughts and exchanged ideas. Since
the most important thing is that we want a result that we both are satisfied with. Cause I
can’t see a point in writing and producing music you are not feeling pleased with. One
thing that I will plan more thoroughly next time I’m doing an EP, or any collaboration with
a singer / rapper. Is that I need to set away more time into finding the proper vocalist
and not rushing it. Since, I don’t want to end up using a Splice vocal again.
I can agree with the interviewees that doing collaborations is something that you should
do, and it is fun and educative. For me personally I can’t see any con at all with it, and I
can’t say that my creative process changed at all. It’s more likely that I get new ideas
and feedback instantly from another person that I can try out. I still kept on working the
same way as I normally do.
Analysis and comparisons
During the process of the songs on my EP I found out that doing collaborations with
others can only be beneficial. All my interviewees are feeling the exact same thing. I
have learned that my songwriting and production process can be more effective and
help you finish songs faster. You have access to another pair of ears and instant
feedback if needed. You will also have a big chance of getting more fans and followers
on your social medias, because of the wider reach your music gets when your
collaborator is sharing it. I have also gained a lot of experience when it comes to
working with singers and songwriters. How the writing process looks like and what I can
do to make the best out of it. Since vocals can be a quite sensitive matter, I have gotten
to know that it’s important to be open-minded and do what you can to make them feel
comfortable. These experiences will be helpful for future projects. Since from now on, I
want to work more with singers and write original songs rather than using samples from
sites like Splice. Then one another important lesson for me is that you sometimes must
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“kill your darlings”, and by that I mean you might have to remove or delete a part or a
sound that you like but it doesn’t fit for the end result. During the writing session of
Summer Days, it was a rough moment when I had to change the arrangement and all
the chords so it would be easier to sing on. One con that N3wport mentioned in his
interview was that he said that by collaborating with others, you will get a lower share of
the income generated by the song. I can understand that, but for me right now I don’t
really care that much about it. Since, I haven’t earned that much money from my music
yet, but I want to do this full time, so earning more money will defiantly help. I don’t know
if this sounds cheesy or naive, but I want to mainly do this for the passion and the
enjoyment of creation soundscapes and evoke emotions in people’s hearts. Money
doesn’t give me happiness.
Discussion
I have found out that there are a lot of pros when it comes to collaborating, all my
interviewees said so and it is probably the common view by most people. When I started
writing this essay, I wanted to get some more insights about how collaborations work for
others. Since, for me, all my previous collaborators usually ended up not being finished.
I didn’t have any specific expectations on what I could learn, mostly just wanted to see
how others work and if they always finish their projects or not. Something that I think I
could have made better for the next time, is to enunciate my questions better, so I would
have been getting a more specific answer regarding the question about if they always
finish their projects or not. As of right now my questions were more about what they do
when a collaboration isn’t working or not. Another interesting approach would also have
been to read and see if there had been any bigger research projects made in this
subject. Or perhaps find a book to read and compare with. Something else that I think
could be an issue that wasn’t mentioned that much from my interviewees, is the split
from the earnings and the royalties. Why didn’t many of my interviewees talk about this?
Did I ask the wrong questions? Or isn’t it that important? Maybe this is something that
could be interesting to research more about in the future.
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The things that I will take away from this project is that collaborations are a good thing,
it’s fun and educative. You will probably earn less money, but your learning curve will be
steeper.
REFERENCES
N3wport Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/artist/1iyaH6NJWncvktAfUcNht8?si=HFKP9GUkT1C5ypYucaev
dQ
Triple M Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/artist/2Tw3Czv2kxEz8h3RILbzjT?si=9LVoRO4sRhKuinz6oRjF
Wg
Jon Madison Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/artist/240cqsfOjSkIXIOOZcNo40?si=aLpjmBczT9Sj7llI1NdwmA
Fenoz Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/artist/4Bzg5gPsYUrp0vW5fFLKLN?si=FBpmB489Qe6wQYv4Kj
lBlA
COLORS EP:
https://soundcloud.com/aymillmusic/
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Questions I asked
1. How is your creative process when you are doing a collaboration compared to
making music by yourself?
2. Who do you usually work with? Songwriters, singers or other producers?
3. What’s most important for you when it comes to collaborations?
4. Are there any benefits of collaborating with others?
5. Do you prepare yourself before a collaboration starts? If so how? Do you write a
contract?
6. How do you set up your collaborations? Do you meet up at a studio or is it only
online?
7. What do you do if the collaboration isn’t turning out the way you want?
8. What are your best experiences with collaborations?
9. How do you approach someone the best way when you want to collaborate with
them?
10. Are there any cons with collaborating with others?
11. Do you have any questions you want to bring up?