How the Evolution of Music Production Cheated the Collaborating Musician

Musicians take for granted the ability to capture recordings of their performances. Today, a variety of options are readily available, from high-end Digital Audio Workstation software to simple free recording apps. Never before has it been this easy, or affordable, for a small group of musicians to record and produce a song and share it with the world. Yet, as music production software has evolved to perfection, has the creative process been left behind? Why did evolution start at the end of the process? Can technology better serve the collaborating musician?

Dawn of Music
At some point after humans developed vocal chords, roughly 200,000 BC, music emerged in the form of singing. These vocalists sang to attract a mate, and it seems that has not changed much. The flute was one of the first musical instruments discovered, dated at around 50,000 BC. This prehistoric flutist would back-up the lead vocalist but would have to settle for the vocalist’s mate’s less attractive sibling. Still, not much has changed. Of course, drummers have been around a long time, but the point in time where they were laying down a beat versus simply expressing anger has yet to be determined.

As music became more socially important, the inability to capture it became a problem. Music could only be recorded by remembering it, shown by performing it, and replicated by teaching it. Even more painful, sharing music required walking with your instrument to the next tribe. This might explain the drummer anger issues.

First Written Music
Written music emerged around 1400 BC, so that musicians could capture and share compositions. The oldest discovered written music was carved in stone using the Cuneiform symbolic script and was composed for the Lyra. It is appropriate that the first guitar tablature was actually written on a tablet. However, since carving tablets required more skill than performing music, the emergence of staff notation on parchment was welcomed as a more convenient and standard medium. Although useful as a composition tool, staff notation is primarily used to capture a complete finished product to be performed.

First Recorded Music
Surprisingly, the first audio record was not intended to be played back, but actually looked at to study vocal patterns. In 1860, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville sang into a phonautograph which recorded the sound as squiggly lines on a piece of paper. Thomas Edison’s wax cylinder-based phonograph from 1877 is credited as the first device for recording and playing back audio. Although his recording of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" never made the pop charts, this device may have been the single most revolutionary contribution to popular music. Musical performances could now be captured and shared.

Over the next 100 years, audio recording continuously evolved to better capture performances and produce high-quality distributable records. Magnetic Tape (Fritz Pfleumer 1928) provided a means for many advances. The ability to record stereo provided a more accurate reproduction of live music. 3-track recorders allowed for capturing vocals separately to achieve a better mix in post-production (as if singers weren’t getting enough attention already).

Multitrack Recording
Eventually, multitrack recorders allowed for recording some tracks while playing back others. This is where technology began to support more experimentation. Musicians could capture several versions (takes) of an instrument performance and pick the one that went best with the remaining tracks. Intentionally or not, this technology advancement became a useful tool for composing music.

The collaboration in the recording studio became part of the creative process. Consider, for example, this interview with Clare Torry regarding her performance on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, where she recorded an amazing vocal solo with no written music. When she showed up at Abbey Road studio, she was given nothing but pre-recorded instrumental tracks and instructions not to use any words. And her final recording was after only two takes.
Despite leveraging multitrack recorders to explore and experiment in the studio, the technology was limited by a continuous linear timeline of music. Creating a new arrangement after recording the initial track required a pair of scissors and some tape. As a result, most fundamental creative decisions about the song were written down and finalized prior to entering the studio.

Digital Audio Workstations
With the advent of affordable computers, music recording went through another leap in evolution. A level of audio quality and editing flexibility that had recently not been possible in a professional studio was suddenly readily available to the average consumer. Most Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) products were designed to be digital versions of their analog predecessors. The primary user was a sound engineer, not a songwriter. Powerful cut/paste editing, coupled with digital effects processing, gave sound engineers the tool of their dreams.

Despite now being free of the confines of reel-to-reel magnetic tape, the DAW user interface remained rooted in a multitrack linear timeline. It had become easier for songwriters to record but experimenting required using these tools in unintended ways. Alternate instrument takes were captured by adding new tracks and selectively muting to compare. An entirely new song idea might be recorded in that infinite space beyond the end of the song. This was easier than scissors and tape, and more effective than pencil and paper. Ultimately, it was still a hack.

Online Collaboration
While DAW technologies were still maturing, the emergence of the internet brought a new dimension into music recording. It was now possible to collaborate from a distance. Initially, the most practical approach was to transmit DAW audio/project files via email. This was akin to playing a game of chess with a friend in another city, where you each kept a chessboard in sync by sending moves to each other.

More recently, we have seen new online multitrack recorders that eliminate the need to manually import/export audio tracks. A group of collaborating musicians can work on a shared project, each recording their individual tracks. Still, these tools remain firmly committed to a single linear timeline as the user interface. Make no mistake, you can collaborate with these tools using tricks like recording new ideas in the timeline after the end of the song. But each time this is done, it is a missed opportunity for technology to meet the true needs of its users.

An experienced musician reading this may be very satisfied with the current state of audio recording technology. The familiarity of how it has always been done can be comforting. The skill acquired working around the multitrack metaphor limitations makes it easier to tolerate. But ultimately, collaboration activities that cannot be achieved are simply avoided.

Online Improv-osition
Consider what happens when a group of musicians sit down in a live setting with the intent to compose music together. One musician with an idea can perform it repeatedly while the others improvise accompanying tracks on their instruments. The dramatization of improvising "Another One Bites the Dust" from the movie Bohemian Rhapsody shows how improvisational composition (improv-osition) can transform simple ideas to a complete song. In many cases, the session can start off with only an idea or two and just letting the process run its course. Sometimes a song will form organically from a ‘bag of ideas.’ Other times, the musicians will simply settle for having had a good time just messing around. The good ideas will iteratively evolve into works of art, and the not so good ideas will...well...be filed away for later consideration.

Now, imagine if you had online technology to support this creative interaction. What if your random idea were first-class citizens of your software? What if you could easily capture and share a simple riff, rhythm, or vocal phrase? Then others could listen, play along, and share their own tracks back with you. This would allow musicians separated by distance or time to collaborate in an unbounded musical sandbox. The technology would need to support just enough structure to capture and share related ideas, while letting the overall flow of the music remain malleable. This sweet spot of the user interface would maximize the ability to express specific ideas, while allowing for making radical changes. Most importantly, it would allow different musicians to go in different directions without destroying work done by others.

This line of reasoning is what inspired the creation of Zirrif. The mission is to provide a virtual workspace for collaborating musicians to create and share recordings that build upon each other's ideas. This phrase-first approach allows collaboration to begin when one musician records a single riff. Other musicians can record additional tracks to play along with that riff or create entirely new phrases. This continuous exchange of performances allows creative inspiration to flow unbounded by premature song structure. Then, once these individual phrases have sufficiently evolved, musicians can experiment with how the individual parts might be organized into a song progression. In this way, a complete composition can emerge organically from the creative contributions of each musician.

Unfortunately, the evolution of recording technology has not placed an emphasis on collaborative composition. The ability to produce final mixes has been perfected, but there is room in the musician’s toolbox for technology that focuses on the creative process itself. These tools need to embrace half-baked ideas, random contributions, and musical experimentation. Allowing collaboration without the confines of a presumptive song timeline can maximize the contributions and enjoyment of each member of the group. This will provide musicians with another way to perfect and enjoy their art.