Collaborations

I don't have experience with that, but I would think that would be the easiest. If you were using something where you could set up multiple tracks you could send it back and forth and keep each track intact, allowing for editing and mixing. On a Mac it is easy to use something like Garageband. I am not sure what else would be cheap and easy
 
Yes, but it's not a simple process. Each person needs to know how to record on their device, plus, they have to use headphones to prevent the original track from recording on their track. Either they use a multi-track app that allows playback with a headphone and record at the same time, or they have to use two devices, one to playback with a headphone, the other to record, which then requires someone to combine and sync the tracks in a multi-track app. I'm sure there are many examples on YouTube.

When my group met twice a week for rehearsal, I would record each song on my iPad Pro, then at home, clean it up and upload it to my web site so everyone could practice anytime as if we're all together. With COVID and using Zoom for play-along rehearsal, the leader now has to record herself singing and playing uke with a drum track, which she send to me, then I use Garage Band on my Mac to record my bass track, then upload that to my site.


This is Michael Kohan in Los Angeles, Beverly Grove near the Beverly Center
9 tenor cutaway ukes, 4 acoustic bass ukes, 12 solid body bass ukes, 14 mini electric bass guitars (Total: 39)

• Donate to The Ukulele Kids Club, they provide ukuleles to children in hospital music therapy programs. www.theukc.org
• Member The CC Strummers: YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/CCStrummers/video, Facebook: www.facebook.com/TheCCStrummers
 
I only ever tried it once.
The way it probably works the best:

The one who is going to mix things together, and probably has the more advanced recording software, records the initial tracks. Then uploads to a file sharing platform - either the advanced project file or an mp3 that might or might not have a metronome in the mix. Mp3 files can probably be attached to mail, but something like Dropbox, Google drive or the like can be needed for bigger files.

Other participant(s) downloads this and listens to it on headphones while recording their bits into a separate track. If you don't have a proper DAW (digital audio workstation), a simple free software like Audacity will let you do that. The other participant uploads their sound files, being it wav or mp3.

The one who does the mixing downloads them, import them to the music software, adjust the volume to suite the other tracks, turns off metronome if there was one, applies any effects such as compression, reverb etc., and exports a finished sound file.

Most of the stuff can be done with audacity if you are patient, but it is not really good for metronome and effects. It is really mostly for recording some tracks and adjusting the volume, which for a lot of purpose is just fine.
 
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An easier solution is Acapella. It is an iPad or iPhone only app. Records video, but the audio track can be saved separately if wanted.
 
An easier solution is Acapella. It is an iPad or iPhone only app. Records video, but the audio track can be saved separately if wanted.

I saw some YouTube videos on that and it seemed promising
 
The success of Acapella is that the application has absorbed the video capabilities of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram combined. Among other things, the service allows users to show creativity. For example, it is possible to use improvised means for arranging instead of standard musical instruments.
 
I recently put together a multi-video arrangement with four instruments (flute, guitar and 2 ukes) and some vocals in 10 separate videos plus some graphics. I'm not an expert but this is how I did it.

My friend who did the arrangement used Sibelius to create a backing track. This is what we listened to via an earpiece when we played our parts.

We each filmed on slightly different camera/audio setups. I collected the files (we used dropbox for file transfer) and converted them using iMovie on my Mac to the same MP4 format (frame rate etc.). This was important for the next step because iPhones (which some of us used) are variable frame rate cameras which can cause syncing issues in the final step.

I put together all the videos using HitFilm Express. The base version is free for PC and Mac and is quite feature rich. You can pay for add-ons which add functionality but the free version is good enough for basic editing.
You can align/sync tracks fairly easily and adjust basic audio levels.

Multi-video combining and editing is much easier using HitFilm express than iMovie.
 
I just finished putting together a video of the leader of my group, Cali Rose & The CC Strummers, and 19 0f our members, which I will post as soon as she uploads it to her YouTube account. I used Final Cut Pro 10.4 on a Mac Mini 2018, 3.2 GHz 6-Core Intel Core i7, 64 GB 2667 MHz DDR4, 8 TB RAID 0 Thunderbolt 3 array. My old MacBook Pro 17" with internal 2 TB SSD ran about 490 read/write, the new Mac Mini runs about 3400. Final Cut Pro is the most versatile editing app made.
 
Enjoying this thread learning about how others create their collaboration projects. I’ve done several over the years with other UU members. Most of the time, it has involved using weTransfer or DropBox for file sharing of both audio and video files. I generally create the final video and use iMovie to do so, however, reading about the other software people are using in lieu of iMovie has piqued my interest.
 
I have discovered that Reaper (a DAW) has some decent video features.
You can have several video tracks with transitioning between them, tiling them etc. Not super advanced, and medium difficulty, but being able to edit the video in the same software as the music is pretty nice.

I have not used it for a collaboration yest, but I hope to in the future.
 
Agree with the second post. It is really interesting to read about how to collaborate on new projects.
 
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