Hello everybody,

we start our new series on the Audiotool Next Live Collab feature with ollie ' s and Cal Lycus 's brand new smasher

[[Embed:https://www.audiotool.com/track/hkvl023pk/]]

Read here about the experiences they had during their collaboration.

Here we go:

1. How did your collaboration come about?

Cal: Ollie sent me a message on audiotool asking if I was down to collaborate, I rarely pass up an opportunity to jump in a draft with someone and I have always kept an eye on Ollie's work and loved the style, I thought something cool could come of it.

OLLIE: If anyone knows me you’ll know i'm not usually one for collabs, preferring to work on my own where possible, but after a listening sesh to Cal’s music, i was like ‘maan i’ve gotta make something with this dude’, thinking (correctly) that our styles would go hand in hand and produce something new and interesting here on AT.

2. How'd you guys get into this? (Did you produce at the same time, or alternately or else)

OLLIE: It helps that we’re both British, same time zones and all that, so Cal and I were usually free around the same times to work on the track. Where possible we worked on the track simultaneously, bouncing ideas off of each other and progressing with each other, but (as mentioned below), if we were working on the collab at different times we would update each other with the changes.

Cal: It definitely helped that I have quit my job to go travelling, so happened to be free anytime that Ollie was.

3. Which of the communication channels did you choose? (Written chat, video chat, audio chat, mute)

Cal: Written chat, sometimes we used facebook chat when notifying each other of the updates… but those were outlined internally too. Artwork was discussed in facebook too, just for the privacy etc. it’s hard to listen to audio chat when focusing on sound design for example.. It’s just not the same as chatting to someone in person.

4. What did you particularly like?

Cal: Speed!!!! There was a point where I had to manually copy automations and notetracks across from one area to another as my internet couldn't handle doing it all and had already kicked us out of the session; as I was doing this, Ollie was elsewhere in the draft working some magic on the drop with some sweeeeeet incidentals...would have taken two or three times as long to do all that myself.

OLLIE: So true dude, plus i really liked the way our workflows kinda synced up with each other and, like you said, the speed at which the track came together; we both knew exactly what was needed and where; which helped tremendously. I also really liked Cal’s approach to sound/bass design, complementing the track perfectly.

5. Where do you see room for improvement?

OLLIE: Honestly just more time to produce the track, Cal starts to busy up fairly soon and won’t be around for a good while so we’re cramming this in before he goes haha. Also I reckon in future endeavours we could more rigidly stick to a genre, as in, this collab goes from House into Neuro-Funk, so house fans will prefer house sections, and dnb fans will like the neuro sections, so being able to strictly define the tracks into a genre is something we’ll try in the future.

6. Your recommendation for the other users

Cal: Collaboration is just as much about learning from each other as anything else. There were times when we would sit back and just watch the other person work on something because it was so different to how we would do it. Ollie is great with a pulsar delay ;)

OLLIE: Haha nice, i do love some pulsar, but yeah couldn’t agree more with Cal, when collaborating you have to be open to the collaborators ideas and enact them how they’d like to see it. There also have to be strong channel/s for communication so you can talk about the track, updates and changes, and keep each other in the know regarding the track. Aaand, i know im not one to talk but keep your project tidy as well!! Label everything correctly/pragmatically, organize your workflow and place your devices in an organized manner, otherwise the collaborator is just gonna be like ‘yeah idk what any of this is’ haha

Cal: For sure! It helped me coming into a project Ollie had already started, everything was labelled and stuff so it made my life easier coming into it, don’t get me wrong..the guy loves a big project so there was a lot of stuff to take in..but labels helped! I remember quite early in the project I told him I was working on the intro a bit and he asked me to keep it close to how he had started it. That kind of communication is key, I liked what was there, had a couple of ideas that I thought would work, so asked him to check them out before I forgot how to undo it, thankfully he liked it. Without real-time collab, that would have sucked. Neither of us were afraid to see we didn’t like something and neither of us took having our stuff edited by the other, personally. It’s just the process.

~

Thank you both very much for your efforts. And keep up the good work

And you folks:

If you have already worked with live collobaration in Next and you and a partner think you have something to say on the subject. Apply here a-records