Remote songwriting – a poor man’s approach for bands

Context, prerequisites and assumptions

The specific problems this addresses

Truth be told, I was piddling about with this idea before Covid-19 really hit. Both Krupskaya and this other project were already facing challenges to productivity. Covid-19 really just exacerbated the need for a solution.

To summarise those challenges:

• Records have been committed to, thus material needs writing.
• Band members live in different cities/towns – regular commute isn’t practical.
• Demoing drum tracks in the studio makes for a slow process and limits iteration.
• External commitments on an individual level means free time is increasingly scarce and doesn’t sync between members.

Many of these are part and parcel of getting older. Being in a band is pretty easy when you’re half arsing University, living with your parents and only working part-time. It might surprise you to learn that I’m talking from experience.

It’s not quite as easy when you’ve a greater range of responsibilities personally, professionally and folks who aren’t in bands don’t always recognise the work that goes into it. Tours across Siberia don’t just fall out of the sky and the work involved only increases as your spare time dwindles.

But if you enjoy doing it and want to keep going, your choice is quite simple:

Adapt or die.

Don’t whinge at me if this doesn’t suit you

Now to be clear – facilitating remote songwriting through a unified digital sharepoint is a subject upon which I’d done no research.

I assumed this would work and it did. Combine this formula with my chronic aversion to effort and you’ll find precious little reason for the approach to be improved/adapted any further.

I must therefore warn you that while everything below works perfectly fine for us, there maybe better alternatives out there for you.

You should already have some recording equipment

If you’re in a band, I’m assuming you already own instruments and some technical means of recording. Sorry if that seems presumptuous.

In respect of the latter – a microphone will do the trick. That was all my brother and I started with when using this process. Sure, it didn’t sound amazing, but it was good enough to start fleshing out ideas.

So while MIDI and basic track setup will be touched upon, a detailed overview of building a home studio – this is not.

Onto the actually useful stuff:

4. Creating/testing a song file

At this point, you’re basically good to go. You’ve got everything you need to record instruments (including drums), arrange your songs and have those ideas instantly accessible to the rest of your band.

But it’s worth creating a test song just to make sure everything is working and that the other members are seeing/hearing the same as you.

The aforementioned designated Nerd therefore needs to do the following:

1. Open your Song Ideas folder.
2. Create a new folder called Test Song.
3. Open Reaper.
4. Create a New Project (File > New Project)
5. Save (File > Save Project As) this project in your Test Song folder, ie: testSong01.RPP.

So long as Dropbox is activate (and subject to internet connection quality), every member assigned to the Song Ideas folder will now see both Test Song and the Reaper project file.

If you want to make sure that the drums are working properly first, simply:

1. In Reaper, create a track for your drums (Track > Insert Virtual Instrument On New Track…).
2. A new dialog box will appear. Select VSTi: MT-PowerDrumKit (MANDA AUDIO) (16 Out).
3. Click OK.
4. A Build Routing Information prompt will ask if you wish to add several tracks. If this was a high level recording I would say yes, but for just roughing out ideas I prefer to keep things simple. Click No.
5. The MTPowerDrumKit splash screen will ask for a donation. Click Skip at the bottom right if you’re cheap. Like me.
6. Sorted!

Once setup correctly, you’ll see something like this.

Click any of the drums and you’ll hear some badass sound fired back at you. Assuming your speakers are on.

That’s all well and good, but you still need a means of writing beats.

If you’re using an electric drum kit, setup your MIDI and once you hit record your beats will come straight through. I had an absolute ballache sorting this out and my troubleshooting process was fairly heavy, so please give me an email if you need some help with that.

If you’re not, make sure your drum track is selected and click Insert > New MIDI Item.

A new sequence will appear on your track. Double click this, your MIDI keyboard will sit down the left and you can add individual beats where you wish for them to appear.

Norilsk is the world!!

Sorted, you can write drums. I mean, unless you’re the drummer – you really shouldn’t. Because it pisses us off.

Once your beat is in, I strongly advise that you save the file and inform the rest of your band. Ask them to open the file on their end and check that the drums are working.

One important thing to remember, is that MT Power Drum Kit will be inactive by default when the software loads. So they might see the MIDI notes but upon playing the file back, hear nothing.

Everytime the software loads, they need to click the FX symbol on the green button you see below.

This will load up the MT Power Drum Kit splash screen, from which Skip can again be selected.

Sorted.

5. Minimising ballache

From a technical perspective – you are done. You’ve spent no money and yet, remote songwriting can now take place among the entire band.

The main issues facing you now will be on an individual organisational level. Such has nearly put a bullet between Krupskaya’s eyes on more than one occasion.

You need to be conscious of file access and conflicts.

For example, you might have two members opening the same RPP file at once. Or, several members might open the same RPP, make changes while offline and then create a conflict when Dropbox tries to synchronise them.

I’ve found that the best solution to these issues, is to employ a bit of common sense. Frightening as that might sound.

If you know you’re going to take a file offline, create a copy and work on that instead. You might even wish to dig into Dropbox’s settings and lock certain files until you’re done with them.

It’s nothing that can’t be solved with a friendly heads up to your creative collaborators. Communicate with the rest of your band and find an approach that works for you.

Or don’t. I probably won’t lose too much sleep.