I thought I might start a topic about collaboration. Specifically, either your experiences, horror stories, how to find people to collaborate with etc.
I ask this because I am new to the dance production game. I spent 15 years as both a studio and live rock drummer in the US, but have always loved electronic music. This past year I finally decided to dive into production (more for the love than the money) and tried to find well known people in my area to collaborate with. I feel I write really decent hooks (again this is from my own diluted perspective :)) but lack alot of the where with all of the technology side of things. I have been amazed at how it seems like taboo in my area. It’d be great to hear from some of you who have experience in this field.
LOL. Yeah you’re not kidding. Maybe I should offer these people dinner and a movie or something. I did team up with one guy (for a price of course) through a friend of mine who is pretty well known in dance music, but he was big back in the 90’s and didn’t seem like he learned anything new since. I had him mix down my first song and to this day everytime I hear it I cringe at what he did to my poor bass drum sound. Maybe I’ll put an ad in the classified section of my local paper.
I would agree that it is a bit like dating, you need to find the right person that your totally comfortable with. I successfully collaborated with someone for all the Funkasaurus stuff but had loads of other collabs that didn’t work at all. We also collab’d successfully through emailing sessions/parts back and forth as it left both them and us in our own spaces working on the same stuff by ourselves. In fact we think it was the best work we ever did as Funkasaurus. You can hear it here (not trying to make you buy it, just wanted you to hear it! ;))
[quote]graham ginty (25/08/2010)[hr]I would agree that it is a bit like dating, you need to find the right person that your totally comfortable with. I successfully collaborated with someone for all the Funkasaurus stuff but had loads of other collabs that didn’t work at all. We also collab’d successfully through emailing sessions/parts back and forth as it left both them and us in our own spaces working on the same stuff by ourselves. In fact we think it was the best work we ever did as Funkasaurus. You can hear it here (not trying to make you buy it, just wanted you to hear it! ;))
Great stuff Graham. How did you get your song on Beatport? I have my song on all the other sites (i.e. itunes amazon etc.) but haven’t figured out how to promote on Beatport.
Rich, just sent you an email bro. Love to hear what your trying to accomplish bro.
[quote]jbachjr78 (25/08/2010)[hr][quote]graham ginty (25/08/2010)[hr]I would agree that it is a bit like dating, you need to find the right person that your totally comfortable with. I successfully collaborated with someone for all the Funkasaurus stuff but had loads of other collabs that didn’t work at all. We also collab’d successfully through emailing sessions/parts back and forth as it left both them and us in our own spaces working on the same stuff by ourselves. In fact we think it was the best work we ever did as Funkasaurus. You can hear it here (not trying to make you buy it, just wanted you to hear it! ;))
Great stuff Graham. How did you get your song on Beatport? I have my song on all the other sites (i.e. itunes amazon etc.) but haven’t figured out how to promote on Beatport.
Rich, just sent you an email bro. Love to hear what your trying to accomplish bro.[/quote]
Hi mate, it was the label, iBreaks, that did it all. Think Beatport are really strict with who they are letting on the site these days in an attempt to cut out all the dross.
I’ve always been interested in colabs, i’ve tried with a couple of friends before but it’s just not really worked out. They’ve more just sat there whilst i’ve come up with all the ideas as well as being the technical one.
Generally i’m not always the tech head, but being in this game i’ve had to force myself to be more technical, i mean to be good at producing you do kinda have to be technical to some sort of degree i guess.
Anyways I live with my girlfriend and her brother at the moment and they always hear what i’m working on, like Unitedvision i kinda lucked out because the brother ‘justin’, he’s big into house music like me as well as DJ.
He always has some wicked ideas so when i’m having a mental block for ideas he normally comes up with some good stuff.
He lets me get on with the technical stuff and then just comes in now and then with his ideas, I have lots of great ideas myself but he just adds to it.
Pretty much all my tracks i show him (and my girlfriend who also has good ideas in a punter perspective) and they offer thoughts.
My first release was actually a remix I did with him, i did all the work but he came up a few of the ideas behind the track. Worked for me, so i added his name to the remix.
I’m going to be doing a colab with a friend at the end of september who’s had a few trance releases before and DJ’s with Jon 00 Flemming, looking forwards.
I’d like to see some Sonic collbs going on. I’d be up for it. I wonder if there is anyway we can get that going? It would also be good to know who (if anyone) is in our local area for this.
Another thing I guess to bring up is if you are doing collabs and you’re planning on releasing the stuff then be up front at the start about % splits of any (small amounts of) money made.
I think Sonic Collabs would be great. You could team people up and make a sonic competition for it. What better way is there to learn then from others and the competition side would help everyone stay focused. Rmallam and I just met up today from an earlier post and we are going to give it a try. We’ll let you guys know how it all works out. We’re starting on Monday.
