No matter what approach you take to create a musical collaboration, whether it’s being recorded together live, or your performances are being recorded separately during our current ‘shelter in place’, socially distanced environment, and then mixed together in ‘post production’, there are a few things that remain the same.

It’s always about the music, and all musicians want to sound (and look) as good as they can to their audience.

We’ve already covered the steps required to make each of your individual recordings sound good in other FAQs. In this section, we’re going to describe the basic approach to collaborating by recording individual tracks and combining them together afterwards.

WHY CAN’T WE ALL JAM TOGETHER ON THE WEB IN REAL TIME? - LATENCY
The first, and most important thing to understand is that it is currently pretty impossible for a group of musicians to simultaneously play together using any on-line video conferencing app (Zoom, Google hangouts, etc.).

The biggest reason is latency, which is the time that it takes to move data (your performance) from one place to another. It doesn’t matter how fast your connection is, latency is still going to be an issue, It’s a matter of physics. Any time you send data from one place to another location and then back again, there’s going to be a delay, which most often will be cumulative. Latency is a dynamic situation, since various ‘packets’ of your data will be sent to recipients by different routes over time. If you’re using a smart phone or tablet, or using wi-fi, the latency issues get even worse.

Although it’s possible that a small number of musicians who have high-speed cable internet access and who live near each other, can sometimes ‘get lucky’ and be able to play something in ‘sync’ (less than a 25 ms latency), generally there are too many variables to count on any consistent success.

OTHER ISSUES
In addition, all video conferencing platforms process their audio and video to limit the bandwidth required to use them, and that will degrade the audio quality even further.

In addition, there are no video conferencing platforms that we know of that will allow you to record the individual musician’s performances and adjust their recorded levels afterwards.

OK, I know you’ve probably heard of the Acapella app, JamKazam, or rivals like NINJAM, eJamming, and Jamulus. Some of them are gone, others are trying to stay in business, some are getting close to a usable product, but none of them can totally defy the laws of physics. Here’s an interesting article on the subject.
There are also specific FAQs on our experiences using Acapella and JamKazam.

SO... HOW CAN WE BEST COLLABORATE ON_LINE?
As we’ve seen countless times on YouTube and other streaming services, it is possible for multiple musicians to collaborate on-line and to produce exceptional videos with professional sounding results.

THE BASIC APPROACH TO ANY ON-LINE COLLABORATION
1) The leader or organizer needs to pick a tune, decide on a key, time signature and tempo, choose the musicians who’ll be collaborating, decide where any solos will occur in the piece.

2) One of the musicians needs to video the first recorded track, to act as a guide for the others. It’s usually better to use a polyphonic instrument like a piano or keyboard to create the guide track.

A guide track should contain:

A) A count off, and possibly a metronome track.

B) Sounds that will be used to synchronize all the recordings (a series of claps, short staccato musical notes, a drum hits, etc.)

C) A performance of the entire piece, at tempo.

D) Instructions on how to use the guide track should be recorded at the beginning of the guide track and instructions on how to deliver the finished tracks should be recorded at the end of the track.

Written, and/or spoken instructions on the guide track should include:

A) The technical specs for the project, like 1080p (1920x1080) video with audio at a 48Kbps sampling rate and 16 bits and AAC Audio compression.

B) A reminder to set up their recording device so that the frame is horizontal (wide and short) not vertical (narrow and tall).

C) Communicate any dress code for the collaboration. (we’re all wearing black for this collaboration, etc.)

D) A reminder to make sure they’ve cleaned the lens on their recording device before recording.

E) A reminder to check their microphone placement , recording levels, lighting, framing and the look of their recording environment (Pick up those dirty socks, etc. before filming...).

F) A reminder that before uploading their video, they should name their video file with their name, the name of the tune, the instrument they’re playing, and a take number if it’s not the only time they are recording.

TRACK SYNCHRONIZATION
Additionally, the musicians should be instructed to record their own synchronizing sounds in unison with the sounds they hear in the guide track. It doesn’t matter how they create it, but they should be short, sharp and relatively loud.

NOTE: The guide track is just that, a guide, and should help the other musicians understand what will be expected of them. After the firs round of recordings, some musicians, or the leader might not be the performance that the creating musician wants to appear in the finished recording, and can be re-recorded after hearing the other musician’s tracks (other musicians may want to re-record their tracks as well).

3) The leader then uploads the finished guide track to Google Drive, drop box, or any other file sharing service that can easily be accessed by the other participants (they’ll need to upload their recordings there as well)

4) Each of the musicians needs to download the guide track, and record their part, while listening to the guide track on headphones or earbuds playing from a device other then their recording device.

5) When all the separate tracks have been recorded, the person who will be synchronizing them, adjusting the relative volume of the tracks, and placing the different videos, needs to download all of the videos and begin the process of Post Production.

POST PRODUCTION
The first thing to know, is that almost all digital video and audio editing programs are non-destructive in nature. That means that the original audio and video files are not touched during the editing or manipulation process. Instead, a file of instructions is created for the edit project that tells the programs exactly how to manipulate the edits and all other parameters of the project. You can always undo or change anything that you've done, or start the project again, and your original files will still be intact.

There’s a great, and free, program out there that will make the post production process very easy. It’s Davinci Resolve 16 and it’s available for Mac, PC and Linux based computers (you can’t do this part on your phone or tablet). Download the free Davinci Resolve program (The download link is at the bottom of the page) and install it on your computer.

There’s also a video checkerboard template that we’ve created that can help you to quickly place the different video recordings into your final video. You Can Download It Here Just right click and 'Save As'.

The basic approach to creating your finished collaboration is to:
A) Import all of the videos (including the guide track) and the checkerboard template into Davinci Resolve.

B) Place all of the videos on separate video tracks in the editor (doesn’t matter what order) and the checkerboard template on a track that’s below the others.

C) Switch to the ‘Fairlight’ audio tab in Davinci Resolve and synchronize them by dragging the individual tracks along the time line until the synchronizing sounds at the beginning of each track are vertically aligned with each other.

D) While still on the ‘Fairlight’ tab, adjust the volume of each track so that they sound good together. You can also add any panning, fades, reverb, equalization, compression, and/or any other sound shaping to the tracks a this point.

E) Switch back to the ‘Edit’ tab, and trim the front and back of the video to start and end appropriately.

F) Select all of the video tracks and shrink their size to approximately fit one or more of the boxes in the checkerboard template.

G) Select the top video track and drag it’s position to where you’d temporarily like it to appear in the final video frame, then work your way down the tracks and move them to their temporary position.

H) Highlight each individual track and adjust it’s position an size to where you’d like it in the finished frame. Hint: You can easily resize a track’s image at any point during the performance, so you might want to place a musician’s video in the center and make them larger. during their solos.

I) If you want to create a border of any kind between your musician’s videos, just find and import any image (solid color, pattern, or scene) or a video, place it on a track just above the checkerboard template, and tun off that track’s visibility until you’re ready to use it.

J) When you’re happy with the result, export your video and share it with the other musicians. If they don’t want to re-record their performance, you’re done and you can share the video with the world. If they want to re-record, then import their new video into Davinci Resolve and place it on a new track just above their old track. NOTE: If you can’t see the count off and synchronizing sound of their old track, just drag it’s left boundary towards the left until you can.

K) Switch to the ‘Fairlight’ tab, and drag the new track along the time line until it’s synchronizing sound is vertically aligned with the old track. Then, mute the old track and adjust the audio levels and other parameters of the new track appropriately.

L) Shrink the size of their new video and move it so that it covers their old video.

M) Turn off the visibility of the old track, trim the beginning and end of the new track as appropriate, and re-export the new video (name the video file with a different name from the first just in case, you can always delete the old ones after the final performance is chosen.

DAVINCI RESOLVE TUTORIALS
A Complete Davinci Resolve Tutorial

A Really Good Tutorial on the Davinci Resolve FairLight Module

Creating a Virtual Choir in DaVinci Resolve 16 The subject of this video is a little different, but the process is the same.

Happy Collaborating!