Collaborating to Create Music During the Global Shutdown

Collaborating to Create Music During the Global Shutdown - Music Documentary (Part 1)

screen shot of four people on a video chat

Screenshot from the music documentary -via Lorenzo's Music Website

I've been making a music documentary for my band

During the pandemic, my band Lorenzo's Music came up with a creative way to collaborate remotely by using open-source tools.

We recorded snippets of musical ideas called "diddys" and organized them in a loop library. This allowed us to catalog every idea instead of waiting to release full songs.

But we ended up also creating a method for collaborating on these ideas remotely. A method that no other musicians or bands were doing.

We came up with a way to collaborate online.

A still from the documentary - via Lorenzo's Music Website

We found a method where we were able to actually record and release six songs during the pandemic.

We ended up doing that using open-source tools like Ardour, Ubuntu Studio as our operating system, and GitHub to share and collaborate on the files.

Using video chats like being in a recording studio booth

Screenshot of man playing drums on video call

Because of this, we were even able to talk while the other person was recording, and we'd be able to make comments on what they played and what they recorded.

So the video chat actually became kind of like the booth that the person would be in recording in a studio.

We would be on one side listening, they would be doing their take, and then we would comment on what we liked and didn't like or what they could do differently during the session.

Tested out our remote recording idea with music loops

Screenshot of musicians with instruments over video chat

We had so many song ideas, just snippets, ideas of songs, and turned them into what we called "diddys".

And I thought what if we tested out these ideas with my method to try and record remotely? And that's really how it all started.

We thought it might be cool to try and do some live stream songwriting.

picture of two musicians playing instruments

When we were able to get back together we liked the whole creativity of the live streaming format when we were working remotely.

The fact that even if nobody's watching, we know it's being recorded. So we kind of got to be at our best.

We thought it might be cool to try and do some live stream songwriting. So we started doing that on our Twitch channel.

And we began trying to just come up with ideas for things we wanted to do as songs.

It was starting to turn into something more...

But what started out as song loops, because we were all in the same room again and able to collaborate together as a team, as a group, as a band, really started to be the beginning of expanding into something more.

Watch part 1 of the documentary

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