I seem to be reasonably good at making patches, but terrible at forming them into songs. I’m thinking of forming a group of electronic knob fiddlers to collaborate on “music”. Is there a popular forum or website for that type of thing?
Cheers, Bret
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One of the most populair collab platforms currently, is based around loops and stems:
https://endlesss.fm/products/mobile
https://www.youtube.com/c/EndlesssFM/videos
Hello Bret, I enjoy using your modules. Wouldn’t a thread on here be a starting point? Not sure what I make can be called conventional ‘music’ though… Would it involve passing patches around and adding to it? It does sound an interesting idea!
I think Colin Benders is doing that on Discord?
i find collaboration is more difficult than just doing stuff solo, because you have to coordinate and prod people, and often one or both you will lose motivation to work on a certain piece and it’s more difficult to just scrap what you were doing and start something new when you’re collaborating than if you’re doing something on your own. i find it’s hard to finish anything without a clear vision/goal and/or a specific deadline. When i want to collaborate with people, i just ask people who are in online communities i’m involved in if they want to collaborate, sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t.
Also in terms of forming stuff into songs, i find one good formula for that is creating something with say 8 tracks, and gradually muting and unmuting tracks and adding effects live, rather than trying to make a completely self playing patch. that leads to an arguably more natural end product. but if you really wanted to make a self playing patch, you could just use your own digital sequencer module to control volume levels and cv adjustments of multiple tracks over some longer length of time.
Whatever pseudo-experts like Klaus Schwab/Bill Gates/whoever say, remote collabs are rubbish. We all know they’re a complete nightmare from experience. They’re the opposite of inclusive, basically petty virtual secret society meetings.
Just get your colleagues/friends/family/church/random homeless people over and in the studio, even if they don’t know anything about music. It might even be preferable that they don’t. Or is that not “New Normal” enough?
Even Tangerine Dream sucked at making songs, I wouldn’t worry.
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Structure is one of those things you definitely get better at with practice and study. There’s as much to learn as with sound design and programming.
Also, I don’t feel I do it particularly well, but Jooper lets me structure things if I want.
Thanks for all of the advice so far! I should clarify two things:
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My concept of a “song” is more like Autechre or minimal house and less like Chvrches. In other words, a bit unstructured is OK with me.
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I think it would be interesting to play with having two or three “feeders” (content creators), and maybe one or two “assemblers” (layers, mix, etc.), then see how it goes. I’d have to interview the potential collaborators and it wouldn’t be open to the public.
They’re the opposite of inclusive, basically petty virtual secret society meetings.
Totally! I’m thinking maybe even cult-like! We’ll need to come up with some cryptic symbolism and some type of 70’s jumpsuits. I’m glad you’re as exited about it as I am! (Friendly humor, I assure you – but I still like the jumpsuit idea. 
)
I think I’m going to take the plunge and post the idea in the Lounge. Maybe it’ll crash and burn, but I could use something new to take up my thoughts.
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I personally participated in 2 collab projects right in here. First, there was the Musical pals initiative which was quite fun and gave nice results 
. There was another project too between 2 other users and me we did in PM, one of us would start a patch, and the others added more stuff as time went. It was a fun process ! I still have a folder full of these patches 
I’m just a bit sad we didn’t get to release any of those, but it was still a fun process. I definitely haven’t felt any frustration or hard time in these projects, both in DM or the Musical pals,threads, but Online Collab is really prone to cause Frustration and problems 
. I did have a jam once in a friends studio, and using some Looping and midi controllers on FL studio, we managed to make a full song in 30 minutes. Online stuff takes sooooo much more longer even when stuff goes well
We could have actually ! We just didn’t have time to finish the project between work/studies for our little group .However, That’s just my experience, and i still had an amazing time while it lasted, so i still think it’s worth it ^^. It was my first time doing collabs, and it was nice ! I think VCV patches are a nice format for collabs
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and also
i’d be up for more like that
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There is also this VST plugin that works in a DAW.
I haven’t worked with it yet so i can not share a 1st hand experience, but it seems interesting.
