Artist Collaboration

"If two heads are better than one, then what about double chins? On that note, I will help myself to seconds." - Jarod Kintz

Collaborating is an essential part of what we do as performance artists and in any given performance there are multiple aspects that require some sort of artist collaboration. In a dance performance the choreography is a given, but then you have sound, costumes, lighting, and any other media such as image or video projection. All of these components require collaboration between the choreographer or director, and each of the personnel in charge of them. 

In my second year of full-time study I did a choreography course and one of the pieces I created required artist collaboration. I chose to collaborate with a fellow student who was studying Music Theatre. He composed one piece of music and arranged another pre-existing song, I then delegated the collaboration between him and a singer, and I had gorgeous live music for my piece. However it did take a lot of back and forth to get the job done, as with any collaboration, and it would not have been possible without the help of the Internet. As we both had pretty crazy study schedules, most of the samples I heard were on SoundCloud. SoundCloud is a super cool website where music artists can create an account and post their music so that it can be heard by anyone, and it's completely free! In terms of collaboration, the most useful tool that SoundCloud provides is one that enables you to make a comment on a specific section of the track. For me it meant I could be really specific about sections that perhaps didn't have the right feel and needed little adjustments, especially since we weren't always in the same room to discuss the sound. The concept of this site is really awesome, my brother who is a DJ and electronic composer gets a lot of his stuff out there on SoundCloud and he can get feedback not only from his target audience, but from other composers. But I digress. 

Photo from http://nyaaaa-n.tumblr.com

I think having the opportunity to collaborate with another artist is a really special thing and it adds a sense of greater involvement to your work. In most cases it also means that each separate entity of the finished product is completely harmonious. However, this is not always the case. Collaborating with other artists can prove to be difficult if each party has different ideas about how something should look or sound. Now this might be hard enough on a face-to-face basis, but in a virtual space things can be misunderstood and more often than not it can take more time to make adjustments. This was the biggest problem I had with my collaboration. I would make a comment on something and it would take my composer time to either receive the comment, make the change and then let me know when I could listen to it again, or for him to disagree with me and then it would take extra time to come to an agreement about what it should be. When we met up in person it was much easier and the conversation was much more open. But most of the time if both parties are open to suggestion and a little bit of give and take then it's easy to compromise. 

Sometimes artists collaborate without being in the same place and this is where Internet tools become vital to the process. If you are creating a work and your composer is in a completely different location, then sites like SoundCloud are a really great way to share music and ideas. If you have two musicians collaborating on the same piece of music then perhaps SoundCloud isn't for you, but since this was not the case with my collaboration it did a very nice job and provided the platform for sharing that was exactly what we needed in our busy and technologically driven lives. I highly recommend it for anyone who is trying to share their sound and receive feedback as well as collaborate with a musician or composer.