Collaboration- the word on the street, everyone’s talking about it, but not everyone knows what it means… sometimes what they really mean is partnership, information sharing or even remixing. I usually like to look on it as working together towards a shared vision. Its that shared vision that makes it a collaboration rather than one of these other terms.
I’ve been working on some collaborations with muscicians around the world that don’t really fit into this shared vision category. The idea is someone sends me a track, and with no further instruction from them, I add more components, vocals, synths, beats… whatever I fancy, and make edits. The track goes back to the originator, or sometimes to another muscician for the continuation of the same process, and the evolution of the track continues. So far this has worked out perfectly, I am extremely surprised. Everyone is very respectful and open, I’ve been really pleased with the finished tracks and everybody seems pretty happy - no obvious shared vision so why so successful?
It seems to me the shared vision in this case is utopic - a shimmering intangible track, we don’t know what it looks like, but we all want it, and we have our own ideas about its components. It still acts as a beacon, guiding us, however we are aware that the creative space in which we work is unbounded.
I feel that in the absence of a clear and tangible vision, its this understanding that carries these projects forwards. Trust, respect and openess become the cornerstones of the work, and the integrity of the actors the drive behind the whole project. Without these faliure is guaranteed, despite the genuine drive and passion of those I work with. With my fellow muscicians, we become each other’s managers - Alice, have you sent me the .wav yet? Graham, hows the bassline sounding? Can I have a listen? The leadership role is taken on by all, risk and reward are very clear. When working with fuzzy vision, in my experience so far, all the other components of the collaboration have been very strong - this I would say is the secret behing working successfully with fuzzy vision.
I don’t know what will become of all these collaborations: timeless masterpieces are of course in the works, so watch this space!
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