Again just a question born from curiosity. I have seen a good number of collaborations on these forums and I wonder how many of them actually happen in one place with people in the same room. Rog and I have done a ton of stuff over the last 5 or 6-ish years, more often with him lending support to me than USA toward England, but I have done a few things in support of his music. Most notable was when his student group did a surf song and I wrote lyrics and sang it. Then his more recent song Take The Time I did vocals and wrote lyrics for one bridge. He has provided amazing engineering for me many times. I'd actually fly him over here for a visit as a gesture of thanks if I wasn't poor!!

Janice lends her vocals to a lot of songs but with telecommunications being what it is now days things are most often done at each participant's home studio. I'll never forget the cuteness of the video of her bopping around doing vocals for Floyd!

I did the one song with Mario, David and Herb lending guitar support, and none of us have ever met. I was hoping to get Notes to give me 16 bars of sax solo but it happened to be at his busiest time of year. Same with Jazzmammal. My piano part was a little sloppy and could be replaced by someone who plays better....

So while the software itself provides backing tracks, so do some the people here!! I'd love to hear stories of your favorite collaborative efforts.

I discuss two collaborations in my Biab video testimonial that's posted on YouTube.


Testimonial Video

Some of my favorites have been on this forum, about 10 or more I guess, one with you Eddie.

The way technology works, especially with poor little Band in a Box that never was really cut out for serious work [sarcasm intended, for the first time in my career, honestly] you don't really have to go into a studio together unless you want to give a bro hug, or a sis hug.

Which is always nice though, come to think of it.

Eddie, do you need a hug, man??

Actually, as much of a loner as I am, a pizza would do it.....

On the way man.

I believe that pizza you showed may be at a place called Talayna's in St Louis. If it isn't, that place has one. The deal is that if you can eat it in an hour it's free. If not it's $30. My pal and I went in about 2004 to try it. We were both competitive eaters then and they recognized us when we walked in, so they stacked the deck and made the crust thicker than usual. 24 inches in diameter, so think about taking on a pizza the size of spare tire on the back of a Jeep.

If you look down from above on the pizza, I ate from noon to 5 in 22 minutes, and then my brain said I was done. Good pizza. I had black olive and onion. My pal had pineapple and ham. So we ended up with most of the pizza left. We couldn't exactly bring it home on the plane, right? Se we went out that night to hang out on LaClede's Landing. On the way back we got White Castle burgers because the last thing we wanted was pizza. So we were buying soft drinks from the machine and a couple of kids came out of a room to do the same and when they saw the bags one laughed and said "And the food delivery is here!" And I looked at him and said "You want food? You want food? Come here." and took him into the room and we gave them the leftover pizzas.

I actually went to do a story on the place for a local newspaper. I did that one and later that summer I did one about Wrigley Field. The same friend came with me so I could say I saw a game at Wrigley. It was that day we learned that a true Chicago hot dog means mustard and onion. I ate one every half inning! (I LOVE being on expenses!)

Good times. Now I have to order a pizza.

I ate a 72 ounce steak and sides once.

It would have been $150 if I didn't finish.

I won't tell you what I did on the way home.

I know that ride home well.

Was that the place in Amarillo?

It certainly smelled like it.

There are steakhouses with offers like that all across Texas. Some even have a wall with 8" X 10" photographs of past winners.

When I was stationed near Lubbock, Texas one of the various things to do was try and guess which steakhouse the Texas Tech Red Raider (American) football linemen would visit to try and eat their way to a free steak.

Over two football seasons my friends and I guessed correctly five times and saw one lineman win one time.

Thanks guys, thanks a lot ! I was supposed to be on a water fast !

You can have water with your steak....

Awesome I haven't seen that one before.


I always use David's quote when recommending BB to artist "what Nashville studio was that recorded in ?"

I get similar "please congratulate the band, they are awesome.."

Not on these forums, but on Reddit I've collaborated on a fair number of tracks by adding guitar and/or bass on a variety of projects from adding live bass to hip-hop, prog, and alternative rock songs, and I've recorded live acoustic and electric guitars from scores produced for indie films and video games.

I live in Israel and the folks I collaborated with were from the US or UK, and in one instance, Russia. All stems (and, if the other person uses Reaper, RPP files), are sent through Dropbox.

The world is indeed flat these days!

Back in the early 2000's I was on a site called acidplanet.com, created by Sonic Foundry to give users of their software an outlet to post their music. It wasn't limited to people creating music using loops though, anyone could post music there.
I did many collaborations through that site, probably close to 100, adding guitar to other peoples tracks situated all across the globe. And had people contribute parts for my songs, there was a percussionist in Brazil that used to do percussion tracks for me.
At that point probably the most fun I had had in music for a very long time. Of course all good things must come to and end, and that site went down the tubes when Sonic Foundry was bought out by Sony.

From this site I have collaborated with PeterF, and also ScottC, and had lots of fun doing so.

And of course for the last few years I've been working with a singer/songwriter from Germany, she heard my music over on soundcloud and asked if I would like to do a song with her, and we have been working together ever since, 30 songs so far.

I couldn't help but "lol" at how this thread turned into food. Steaks are good, but I'm a seafood guy myself, having grown on up on the west coast it makes sense. Give me a plate of oysters and I'm happy as a clam (pun intended).

But yes, on the actual topic I'm very intrigued about people's experiences with collaborating on the forums too! Would love to hear some more stories

We've done over 100 collabs since joining the forum seven years ago. This includes co-writes, a track from a user created for us and us creating a track for a user. What is not included are the countless times that we asked for and received what I call "mix counsel." This has been invaluable as I've tried to transition from my years of playing only bluegrass and recording/mixing analog. From the get go floyd and a bit later Tom have generously shared knowledge with us. They've forgotten more than I'll ever know but it's been and continues to be a fun journey.

For any user of the Showcase forum it obvious that 90% of our collabs have been with floyd (our first and a man of infinite patience ), Tom and Peter. We've had the pleasure of meeting Tom and floyd. Peter is "only" about 9,000 miles away so we haven't met...yet. We have many things in common with these folks beyond just music collabs (as we do with the great folks with whom we've collaborated only a few times).

We've never worked on a song other than via net communications although Janice and Tom have sung together - most recently in a lovely National Park campground.

Bud

PS: Janice and I are vegetarians and have little to add to the food discussion But i will say that she can cook meatless dishes that would please about anybody.

PPS: The video Eddie mentioned (got a big smile) was a spontaneous candid I shot when Janice and I came in after a round of Hurricane Irma cleanup and decided it was a good time to record a track...work clothes and all! Little did we know...

Note that the pizza pic I posted was meatless.... and that dinner here is usually either green pea or lentil soup, with a whole Vidalia onion chopped up in it, or a baked vegetable. Recently discovered farro, which I cook in veggie broth, and add red onion and split cherry tomatoes, mixed with a splash of olive oil and balsamic. It is awesome. $1.76 for a bag of farro at Trader Joe's! 1 bag is to servings.

Just a little menu tip from your ol' Uncle eddie!!

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.

Look at that! He finally came out of his shell and delivered a pearl of a pun!!!

But after that rimshot moment, back to topic...

A few years back, Rog reached out to me and asked if it was okay to take one of my songs and have his female singing students of the time, teens then but out of college now I believe, add some backing vocals to one of my songs. I had no problem with that and they did a really nice job. I had no issues with their performance, and the only thing that is lacked was "age". They SOUNDED like mid teen girls. I would bet a Wendy's frosty that if they united again and sang those same parts they would sound completely different now as their voices have about 6-7 more years of seasoning on them. I don't know if they all still even live in the same area.

Those BGV adventures led to them each doing one of my songs as a lead singer, one of which they absolutely KILLED as Rog wrote a more pop arrangement of the original slow drag country tune, and in fact I am still begging a strong singer I have worked with here to come over and sing his arrangement. As much as I liked the song as a slow country song, his pop arrangement is the keeper.

THAT led to him introducing his male vocal students. One of them, Chad, is the singer i wish I was. Amazing tone, amazing pitch control. He did one of my songs as a lead vocalist as well. They also did another with 2 of them, Chad and Andy, switching off verse and chorus. That one he wrote a Beach Boy arrangement for. And that Beach Boy feel led to his kids writing a surf song, for which I supplied some lyrics and the lead vocal. THAT grew into him asking me to sing one of his songs, Take The Time.

So that collaborative web grew into many projects just from him asking if his girls could get some BGV experience on one of my songs.

Yeah, Eddie and I have had some real fun with these projects over the last six years or so and I hope for much more fun over the years to come.

I think when you collaborate, the working relationship is all important. Fortunately, we both have the same approach - we can be quite blunt with opinions, but without being offensive and at the same time we're both open to change and fresh ideas. Bouncing ideas around in this fashion can produce an end result which is better than either of us would have achieved on our own.

Most of the students that Eddie mentioned are still in touch, though most have moved out of the area to work. One day we might arrange a reunion concert and fly Eddie over here as well.

At the end of the day, perhaps the best part of collaboration is the friends you make along the way. That's priceless.

ROG.

I always enjoyed the songs Rog released with his students. Some of them were really quite talented.