Any tips on effective collaboration?

[Eat Bass]

I never collaborate but my friend finally got reason so he came over and we started in reason then moved over to logic since I can work a lot faster there. He plays drums and guitar so he is valuable as long as he's not controlling the daw. Anyways I noticed it was actually harder for me to come up with something while he was standing over me.

However, at one point we played the drum loop and I began jamming something and we both got the same idea of flow from my little jam and we improved it until it was what we had in our head. It seemed that one natural occurrence was the only real value I could pull from the session.

Do y'all have any tips on how to collaborate and ways to feed off each other to come up with something. I almost feel some sort of pressure collaborating that kills my flow and my patience. I tend to work fairly slow as well so I feel rushed when collaborating especially when doing technical things that my friend hasn't a clue about.

[fragments]

I've always been terrible at collabs. Personally my issues as always been the passing back and forth of project files or audio stems a million times. Recently I did a collab for a competition where my partner did all the drum patterns, designed a solid set of sounds and did pretty much the whole arrangement. He sent it to me and I did the sound design and arrangement on the bass, chopped up his drum arrangements some, changed a few things around arrangement wise, added a choir pad, did some automation and mixed the tune. We chatted a lot, A LOT about the tune during both our turns. It went so much better than these collabs I've tried where people send me like an 8 bar melody...like what the fuck am I even supposed to do with that? A lot of communication and critical listening and less passing shit back and forth works best for me I found.

I've haven't done an in person collab in ages, but when I did it was easier if everyone's role is clearly defined. Based on what you've said it sounds like maybe you should focus on jamming and recording things to use with your friend. Leave the technical stuff to do on your own time. Collabs don't have to be 50/50 split on the work (and that's hard to define anyway). As in my example, I got a tune that was well on it's way to being finished in most regards, but we chatted a ton about where we waned the tune to go. Sometimes I made suggestions or gave ideas, but my partner would execute them--I think that is where the magic is in a collab--one of us had an idea, the other executed it.

Collabs are funny, some people who I'm pretty good friends with and whose music I love were incredibly annoying to collab with or things just never clicked. Then I worked with a person I hardly new and we came up with a pretty good track for a competition and this turned into us starting another project.

[Eat Bass]

thats some good advice, thanks bro. i will definitely try to separate the technical tasks and work on laying ideas down with my friend. i think maybe if i get all my sound design and sample selection ready to go before he comes over, that way we can lay ideas down with minimal interruptions and let the creativity flow. because sometimes we would jam and come up with an awesome riff but then be interrupted and get stuck.

[GuardianGate]

What fragments said is right. It is much easier if one person does a majority of the work while the other passes ideas, rather than taking turns on the DAW. What I do with my partner is, I sit at the DAW and we come up with a general idea of what we want the track to sound like. After that I get to work on the track and my friend plays Xbox haha. If he thinks of something that he wants to add he lets me know and I add it. If he hears something he doesnt like he lets me know and we tweak it. Eventually we do switch and he jumps on for a while. Then I play some xbox or whatever.

Having something for your friend to do while you work stops him from hanging over your shoulder and takes some pressure off. It is definitely hard to concentrate like that.

Getting some sounds made before meeting up is also something we do. We also do sound design days where we sit and try to make a better sound than each other. This often leads to inspiration and a new project.

[HollandVW]

Use dropbox to send stems. When you put things in the dropbox folder, it automatically downloads for whoever you're sharing the folder with.

[Icetickle]

Don't be stubborn, but if it doesn't work out don't waste your time.

[outbound]

Work quick and keep nagging! otherwise it'll never get finished. Also if you can find someone who lives close go other to theirs or vice versa, so much easier to work in 'real life' than the interwebz.