In 2021 there are no excuses to not collaborate with talented musicians around the world. We are lucky to have so much technology in our hands that we might end up shutting ourselves down and not work with anyone! No good! Have a look a Twitch, Discords and Reddit. There are plenty of communities to talk about music and create together. The dilemma is understanding how to use technology in our favour.
In this blog post, I’ll try my best to simplify the process for you. Leave a comment below if you need any clarification.
Ideally, we need three components to make the process work smoothly:
- DAW (music software) on each end.
- Cloud Storage – MEGA, Dropbox, WeTransfer, etc.
- Audio interface or USB microphones on each end.
I’ll go through the process that I’ve been using for the past three years working with local artists in Italy and later I will share some online tools.
I’m assuming the following scenario, the producer will guide the artist in setting up the music gear and the artist has limited knowledge of the technology. Therefore, my dear producers, you need to take responsibility and be patient with the artists, trust me it will pay off!
The music equipment should consist of the following three components:
- Computer – Windows or Mac doesn’t matter
- DAW – Reaper
- Cloud Storage – MEGA and WeTransfer
- Audio interface and microphone – Behringer U-PHORIA M2 and Neewer NW-800.
I use Reaper since it’s free for evaluation purposes. Please if you use Reaper to monetize music you should then purchase a licence. For cloud-storage, MEGA and WeTransfer are fantastic. MEGA offers 50GB of storage and WeTransfer allows you to transfer files up to 2GB, enough space to share audio. For the audio interface, I shared a budget example of what the artist could buy to set-up his own small studio. Ideally, even a USB microphone or an iPhone microphone could do the job. It may sound blasphemy but I don’t believe in premium quality at an early stage. Have fun in discovering, learning and enjoying the process, don’t worry about getting a UAD interface or a Neumann U87!
Here my lazy three steps to get recording remotely!
- Remote desktop – How do I set up the gear in the artist’s computer? I use AnyDesk, remote desktop software that allows you to take control of a computer remotely. The tool is perfect to make the process as smooth as possible for the artist. Now you can easily install Reaper, set up the audio interface and the session to your artists’ computer. 🤘
- Recording session – Now it’s the fun part, real-time monitoring may work with some latency. However, if you instruct your artists they will soon learn how to record multiple takes and you will only need to supervise and tidy up the session.
- Transfer the session! – Perfect! You’ve got the session ready, you can take control of the computer and save the project in your favourite format or you could export the stems. Zip the folder and you can now send it to yourself via WeTransfer. Furthermore, you can show the artist how to do it and the artist may be proactive and start to send you projects every weekend! Another beautiful hack, set up a shared folder with MEGA and instruct the artist to save any draft to the folder. Now you’ll be able to access the content anytime from your laptop.
In conclusion, this is not the best guide to work remotely 🤣 but I hope that the idea came across 💡. The secret is using remote desktop software and patience with the artist. You’ll be good to make music from any part of the world!
If everything that I explained doesn’t make sense, hit me up on Instagram and let’s have a chat! I found two online tools that allow you to collaborate remotely without any technicalities. Try to play with SoundTrap and BandLab!
Thanks for passing by and see you to the next post! 👋
Photo by Duncan Kidd on Unsplash