on Oct 5th, 2006
Music Wiki
When I was in Korea, I wanted to make some music with a buddy who was back in the U.S. Obviously, we couldn’t get together and record a track. But we did manage to record a track together. I created and arranged the music track on my computer. I also recorded the chorus to the song. Then I called him up and played the music track through the phone. He did some vocals over the phone and I put the mic up against the phone and added it to the song. This was a crude way to do long distance collaboration. There should be a better way to collaborate musically using the Internet.
This is my idea. We need web based music software similar in functionality to Cakewalk’s Sonar that allows seamless collaboration with musicians. Sometimes, I am inspired and stumble upon a great guitar riff. I would like to be able to lay the guitar track down using this software and allow anybody else on the net to add to my song by laying down another instrument, lyrics, or a beat. It would be like Wikipedia, but the community would be building songs rather than articles. The great thing about Wikipedia is that anybody with specialized knowledge can contribute. Music is similar. Everybody has a specialty. A person who is a great flute player may have a hard time finding a project that they can contribute to. If this type of online community existed, they would definitely be able to find a project they could contribute to. A full fledged web based multi-track recording system would not be feasible. Instead, a company like Cakewalk could develop web based software that links users of their client-side software.
The Internet is changing everything. I don’t think we have even scratched the surface when it comes to the ways in which the Internet can be used to solve day to day problems. Imagine a "band" who have different band members for each song. Various people contribute to each song. Currently, there is a lot of talent being wasted. There is probably some amazing fiddle player in Notown, Iowa who has never contributed to any song. At the same time, there is probably some amazing folk song writer in L.A. who cannot find a decent fiddle player. The Internet could bring these people together with the right software.
Nice Post.
That was well said. Always appreciate your indepth views. Keep up the great work!
John