With the advent of the internet, collaborating via long distance is the way I have done it. Heck, if I had to rely on songwriting talent from this area, I'd have nothing.... well, except for David Snyder who lives about 20 miles or so up the road in Raleigh. And there's a few others in our NSAI Raleigh chapter who write well and in the same genres.

But even the collab David and I did, Whiskey For Breakfast, was done across the digital wires. I've done collabs with folks from various parts of the world and it just seems to work well.

I can't deny there's a certain electricity when you're writing in the same room, like jamming and playing live, but really, who here has the time and money to meet up with others on this forum? Just like in a real room, you either click or you don't. I've approached several here to do collabs and ...well, let's just say for the sake of civility, whatever the excuse, it didn't work for one reason or another. It is what it is. Imagine now if they or I, had to travel to Michigan or Florida or California only to find out that things weren't going to work out.

Long distance collabs are good. There's little to no pressure or deadline requirements. You have plenty of time to think about the song melody or the lyric lines, and you can bounce things back and forth easily.

In another forum site, I was in a virtual band where the other guys were in Texas (2) and California (1)...and we wrote, edited, recorded our parts, and sent them to the person handling the mixing chores. It came with all the drama of a real band, without having to hear the people actually whine about this or that. After that first song, I resigned virtually as well, from that virtual band. It was real and it was fun but it wasn't real fun.

So...yeah.... I'm a big fan of long distance collabs.

You can find my music at:
www.herbhartley.com
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