In my recent post, LP – On the Mend, I talked about how the low cost of digital recording equipment brings high quality recordings into the hands of everyday musicians. An exciting idea, which I intentionally skimmed past in that post, is that the marriage of digital recording and the big pipes of the internet also makes collaborative recording ridiculously easy.

Imagine this hypothetical scenario. John Lennon is sitting at his white grand piano in his big white room at Tittenhurst. Has a brilliant thought and flips on the eight track recorder. “This song needs a string section”, he thinks to himself. He then takes the one-inch open-reel tape that he has just recorded on, packages it up in a big box and ships it off to New York. A week later, when it arrives, Phil Spector adds the string section. Phil then calls John on the phone and says, “Hey man, you gotta hop on the next plane to New York so you can hear the final results…”
 


 
Now image how things would be different if they could have emailed the recorded tracks back and forth. In fact, since we are no longer talking about physical tape, John could have emailed the recorded tracks to ten or a hundred different studios in virtually no time at all. I can just imagine the email.

Engineers around the world…
I just recorded the basic tracks for a song called ‘Imagine’. I have sent this track to a hundred recording studios with the hopes that each will bring in some session musicians and lay down a string section for me. Once your recording is complete, email it back to me and I will make a grand selection to be included on my next album. -John.

Our technology makes this sort of collaborative recording very easy. So easy, in fact, that no coordination between you and the studios of the world needs to take place at all. Simply post your music on the internet and wait for the emails to roll in with remixed versions of your tune.

Think I’m crazy? Well, I have proof. I posted an mp3 of On the Mend to baconworks.com on Monday. Less than a week later a friend sent me the following email:

…finally got my recording crap working again. So……I noodled around with your great tune. It’s got shades of Longnancy’s Jig to it. Anyway , hope you didn’t mind me Pluc’n with it.

:-{ Mustachio

That just made my week.

Below is Mustachio’s new version of On the Mend with a new bouzouki track mixed in. Hearing this makes me want to go change my guitar parts to give the bouzouki more room. Imagine all the possibilities!