Interesting Collaboration Site: IndabaMusic
To begin, I know it’s been some time since I’ve posted… It’s been a busy month on several fronts, but pleased to say that I have some promising riffs coming to life inside my studio so a new tune appears to be on the horizon! I’ve also been adjusting to my new RD700GX master controller – but I’m getting it dialed in.
In the mean time, I wanted to share a promising music collaboration site that I recently “stumbled upon”: IndabaMusic.com
This site appears to be designed around the concept of a creating Online Sessions; meaning, you create a “space” that represents a Project or Session and post your tracks with various tags allowing others to find, listen, and then join in. You can also specify the type of tracks (and musicians) you’re looking for… Those who join can then contribute their tracks – and you can even do the mixing online, although I don’t envision this replacing my studio tools. I’m hoping to use Indaba to find some high-quality musicians with whom I can collaborate with & hire. I especially like the ability to search for specific musical skills and sample previous work… you can reach out to these musicians and invite them to work on your session. You can make your sessions either public or private, the former enables anyone in the Indaba community to listen in, comment, and/or contribute.
I’ve been struggling to find professional session musicians for sax and horns. My music has a lot of interweaving between sax and piano, and despite having some VERY good technology, there’s no substitute for real, live-recorded wind instruments. I have drums and guitars covered courtesy of my friends at StudioPros.com, but I’d welcome an expansion of options since they don’t provide horn players, and I’d just assume do it ALL on line.
Given that music is now mostly recorded into a digital medium, a site like Indaba could really help. Most importantly, it “appears” to have a growing membership base. In my brief review I found it easy to search and review a wide range of talent and genres, certainly not all to my liking. BUT, I did find some very good players, particularly in the realm of jazz guitar and sax – the authenticity and quality of these parts are critical for the kind of stuff I write…
So I think I’m going to take Indaba for a spin – best of all, you get everything you need for your first session for free! But once you need more “space” (as in gigabytes of storage space for more sessions), you pay $10 USD/mo. Very acceptable.
Check out Indaba when you get a chance, and let me know what you think!
February 17th, 2009 at 7:52 pm
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March 13th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Great post… You should also try http://www.studiotraxx.com. They have a couple thousand top notch musicians and lots of horn players. The rates seem very affordable!
March 13th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
Hi Jaymes, Thanks for taking the time to post, and yes, I have seen StudioTraxx – I agree it’s a great forum as you describe and I actually found my horn players there. Have you used it yet?
April 5th, 2009 at 10:06 am
Yes, I used StudioTraxx.com on my last song and it was a great experience. Literally, within 5 minutes of joining the site, I was able to create a project and kick off quote requests to several guitar players who responded right away. 3 days later, my song had the guitar part I was struggling to put down myself. Very smooth process. I only wish there was a site like this 10 years ago — I live in the middle of nowhere so finding local studio guys is tough. The nice thing with StudioTraxx is that they seem to be focused on getting down to business.
April 5th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
Completely agree! This is the “new way” as far as I’m concerned. I’d go so far to say that everyone could save lots of time and $ with less “tools” (virtual instruments, samples, etc) – play the instrument you know, write the music that inspires you and ENLIST the help of fellow musicians to fill in the gaps. Although I’ve yet to use to StudioTraxx, I’ll keep your comments in mind – must say I was impressed by the roster when I originally reviewed the available musicians! Thanks for stopping by and posting!