Collaborating With Other Musicians OnlineExploring the creative process between collaborators

Emil Högberg

Recording/performing artist, Higher Education Diploma

2020

Luleå University of Technology

Department of Arts, Communication and Education

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Collaborating With Other Musicians online Exploring the creative process between collaborators

Emil Högberg –D0103G essay in Higher Education Diploma Programme as

recording/performing artist | 2020 | tutor: Harri Ihanus

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Table OF contents

Introduction

Background

PurposE

My Experience with collaborationS

MethoD

The process behind making the songs

- me and you (in the afterglow)

- Summer days

- cold nights

- Untold secrets

The Interviews

- n3wport

- triple m

- Jon Madison

- Fenoz

- Hans Brooks

Result

-Interviewees conclusion

-My collaborations

Analyze and compare

Discussion

REFERENCES

Questions I asked

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Introduction

I’m a music producer that is active in several different subgenres in electronic dance

music (EDM). A music producer is a person that oversees the recording process, most

often the creative side and decides how everything should sound like. You can compare

it to a film director. During the last decade, the role as a music producer has progressed

into a factotum position, which means you usually have several different roles yourself:

you can be a songwriter, mixing engineer, recording engineer and even a singer.

Another thing that has changed is the workplace. It’s common nowadays that people are

sitting at home and producing their own beats/songs. This is foremost possible because

of how the technology has evolved and made everything smaller and more efficient. If

you rewind back 25 years this was an impossible task. You needed big studios, with big

rooms to record drums, guitars, keyboards and vocals, and a huge mixing table with big

tape machines to record it all. Nowadays you have everything you need with a laptop,

an audio interface and with access to the internet. You can easily find pre-recorded

vocals, hire vocalists online, buy sample packs with drum loops and make your own

melody sounds with virtual synthesizers. There’re also huge digital libraries with sounds

that real instrumentalists recorded which you can use to create your own chord

progressions or melodies. So, you basically have everything you need to make a big

dance record with only a simple laptop sitting in your own garage in the Bronx. It’s also

easy to get in touch with other artists, producers and singers through social media and

other sites on the web. In my essay I want to explore how the process looks like when

you are collaborating with others online. It could be between other producers, singers,

songwriters or even instrumentalists. How do you start a collab? Are there any pros and

cons with collaborating? I also would like to examine what people do if they are having

trouble getting along while collaborating. How do you maintain a good chemistry with the

others? And if your creative process differs compared to when you are writing music by

yourselves.

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Background

My name is Emil Högberg and I’m a 31 year old man from Sundsvall, Sweden, currently

living in the northern part of Sweden in a town called Piteå. I’m currently studying Higher

Education Diploma Programme as recording/performing artist at Musikhögskolan in

Piteå. I have an artist project called ay-Mill, which is currently focused on a style called

Future House, which is a subgenre of House-music in EDM. Songs within this genre is

normally characterized by a muted / filtered melody with a metallic, elastic-sounding

synthesizer with pitch bends and groovy rhythms. I have been making music for the last

5-6 years now, and most of the stuff that I learned along the way is self-thought or by

watching tutorials om YouTube. I create all my music in a program called FL Studio by

Image-Line. The first time I opened FL Studio was at a friend’s place from my class in

elementary school. At that time, I was only making short loops, and was just playing

around with different sounds. If we fast forward to my time in senior high school when I

was studying Graphic Communications, I started to feel that this isn’t something I’m

passionate about. During my exams I choose to write music instead, since the subject of

choice could be anything. Since then my journey has progressed a lot. I started writing

full songs and started experimenting with different genres. I was always enjoying making

music, but after my graduation I didn’t have enough time nor energy to do music after

my 9 to 5 job. After a few years I decided I wanted to do something else with my life, so I

applied to a pre-college school to study Music Production and Sound Engineering at

Hola Folkhögskola. After spending one year at that school I decided to continue my

journey in Piteå at Musikhögskolan. During my time in Piteå I have learned much about

songwriting, melodies, and mixing. Both from classes at school, sitting at home

producing and talking to other producers on social media. My progression curve has

never been this steep before. The number one thing that I will take away from this, is

that time is the most essential thing. You can learn everything on your own with the

resources internet retains, it’s just easier (for me at least) when you are attending a

university, since you will have way more time and energy than if you would only have

the free time to study after your 9 to 5 job. At least, this is my experience with time

management, I guess it can variate a lot depending on what you are studying.

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purpose

The purpose with this essay is to explore the process behind collaborating with other

musicians online and to explore how the communication and the chemistry between

everyone works. And to see if the creative part differs compared to when you are writing

music on your own.

Questions:

Are there any pros and cons when you are collaborating with others? If so, what?

Does the creative process change when you are working with someone else? If so,

how?

How do you divide the work among all the partakers when it comes to both the creative

and non-creative part of music making?

If disagreements occur in the working process with your collaborator, what do you do?

How to create and maintain a good communication, and how do you interact with each

other?

My Experience With Collaborations

Since I started producing, I have been collaborating with several different artists and

singers. Most of the time it happened quite rapidly and spontaneously. In this genre of

music, it’s quite common that people just send you a message and say, “Collab bro?”.

And often, that isn’t a valid strategy. You want the collab to be beneficial for both parties

and using that line of approach just feels unprofessional. Other times I got to know

people and their music, and we expanded our relationship into something more. The

process usually looks like one person has an idea they want to finish with the other one.

Then the project will be sent between both parties several times back and forth.

Sometimes we have discussions in between to talk about how we want to proceed, but

most of the times we didn’t get any further. The other person stops answering or says

that he/she doesn’t have any time to spend and the project is buried. So, I’m very keen

to know if this has happened to others as well.

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Method

I will be gathering data by interviewing producers, songwriters/singers and mixing

engineers. The way I will be doing this is to send each one a Google sheet document

with ten questions for them to answer. There will both be people with more experience

than me, and similar ones to my progress. My plan is to interview 5 people, so I get

enough data to compare and see the difference between each alignment in the music

business. So, how and why did I pick these persons? Most of them are people I have

gotten to know through social media, and my idea is that it would easier to get answers

by asking someone that I’m acquaintance with, then contacting a bigger artist that might

not answer.

Another part of the exam is to write four new songs and release an EP during this

semester. My plan is that I want to collaborate with other musicians on these songs and

take notes about how our progress goes. I will then be comparing these experiences

and see if and how they differ to others I have done previously. Will we be able to finish

a song? How will our communication look like? To maximize the amount of the data, I

want to find four different people to collaborate with on my songs. I want to focus on

having original vocals on all of these songs and write lyrics together with them.

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The PROCESS behind making the songs

The first song - Me and you (in the afterglow)

This collaboration started with me posting a video on my Instagram page with me asking

what people’s thoughts are on this instrumental idea I was working on. A guy named

Jon Madison commented that he really liked it and wrote to me in private messages and

asked if he could record vocals for it. Jon Madison is a guy I started following on

Instagram for over a year ago and we have been talking quite sporadically since. It’s not

until the beginning of this year we started to talk daily. Not only about music but

basically anything from life in general, cooking and video games. I knew that he is a

great singer and songwriter, so I got instantly excited and I sent him the instrumental

track and all the necessary information which was needed. We started talking about the

lyrics and what kind of feeling we wanted to convey. Since the chords were so emotional

and the drop/chorus had a very low-key arrangement, we wanted the vocals to be

colorful and touching. Jon Madison already had some great ideas, so he started working

immediately. Just after a few days he sent me the first draft which he recorded with his

cellphone. I think the idea fitted perfectly with the instrumental itself and after a few

weeks later I had the recorded vocal sent to me and fully processed. I simply just

adjusted a few things with EQ and Reverb, and we were done. Everything went so fast

with this song and I think this has a lot to do with how great our communication was. We

both knew what the other one wanted to evoke and how we were supposed to do it. Due

to that I think this probably one of the most successful collaboration I have ever had.

Everything went smooth and the communication was clear all the way through. We

could easily discuss things during the whole process, and both be satisfied with the

result. Which I think is the most important thing when it comes to collaborating. I feel

that this song is the launch of many great things. Collaborating with Jon was amazing,

fun and educative. I have found a friend for the rest of my life.

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Summer Days

The Summer Days collaboration started with me sending out the instrumental of an

uplifting, happy, summerish song to Jon Madison for feedback. He instantly loved it and

I asked if he knew someone that could sing on it, and he suggested that he could. I told

him about the idea that I had about a female singer doing the vocals. Since sometimes

you just get a feeling, or an idea of what could work well with the song. Jon mentions

that his sister is a singer as well, and he could ask her if she would be interested. Then I

get the idea of them doing a duet together. Since that is not so common nowadays in

EDM music, I think it would be an amazing opportunity. I asked if they would be

interested in doing that, and a few days later he tells me that they are. After that we start

talking about the title, lyrics and the arrangement. As of right now the song was quite

busy with several elements that are going on at the same time, which makes it hard to

sing on. The listener might get confused and doesn’t know what to focus on. So, Jon

suggested that we make it simpler and make room for the vocals. Then Jon also said

that the chords that I initially had, was hard to sing on, so he suggested that I should

write something simpler like a four-chord loop. After that I wrote a new simpler yet

effective turnaround chord progression that fitted well to the vocals. The next step was

to find a driving element that could help drive the song forward together with the vocals.

Since the theme of the song is summer, I instantly thought about a guitar. We started

testing out some few simple yet effective riffs in our music program, and then I went with

a friend to the studio at Musikhögskolan to recorded it. Today, both Pop music and EDM

is mostly made using only electronic instruments or samples, so to be able to record

your own instruments are an amazing opportunity. Initially when I made the structure of

the song it was quite long, and Jon suggested that we should use a classic pop

arrangement, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, verse, pre-chorus bridge and chorus. But I

didn’t like that and that would mean that we had to make the chorus / drop shorter.

Since otherwise the song would be over five minutes long. I kept the original

arrangement and sent the new version with the new chords and the guitar recording to

Jon and his sister Cherese. One week later I get the first demo recording with Jon

singing all the lyrics, just to show me what the melody sounds like and to show me the

lyrics. My first impression was that he totally nailed it, the lyrics was telling an amazing

story and the melody was so catchy. It wasn’t until two weeks later I had the final

recording sent to me. Jon and Cherese recorded several takes that I could pick from

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and choose which one I liked the most. The next morning, I was listening through each

take and choosing the phrases that I liked the most. I didn’t want to risk my ears getting

to tired, so I only spent a few hours during the whole day, and then I could continue the

next day. Now when I had all the vocals lined up, I could start processing them with

effects. Since I haven’t worked much with vocals before I didn’t have access to the most

effective vocal tuning programs (Autotune). Since there’s a chance with the simpler

programs that the notes will shift in the wrong direction if you put it on automatic pitching

mode. So, to get the best result, I imported all the vocals and was tuning each word by

itself. This was a long and demanding process to both my energy and the endurance of

my ears, After two days of editing I’m finally done, and I can start adding FXs and work

on the levels and the dynamics. The next morning, I finished the first draft and I sent it to

Jon Madison for feedback. He thought I was on the right way, but the vocals needed

more tuning and more clarity. I started working on the tuning processing again and

tweaked some of the levels to achieve more clarity before sent him the next draft. He

said that he could give it a shot and try to make mix them himself. After a few days, or

maybe closer to a week I get a video on Instagram of Jon playing the processed vocals

for me, and it sounds amazing! He really took the processing and quality of the vocals

ten times higher. I decided that we should use his edit of the vocals in the final version

of the song, because it fits better to the quality of the modern sound of today. This song

makes me so happy every time I listen to it. Jon really made an amazing job writing the

lyrics and the vocal melody to match it with the instrumental.

Cold Nights

Cold Nights was an interesting song to make. At first it was a remix that I made for a

remix contest held at Splice. The song was a Future Bass / Pop song which had a vocal

arrangement all the way through. When I was writing this song / instrumental, I had

another happier melody as a chorus and hook, since that fitted well to the vocal at that

time. But when I started planning and working on this EP, I wanted something more

mellow and dusky. I took some parts of the verses and changed the whole chorus / drop

to what it is now. Pitch-bending supersaw chords with aggressive basslines and groovy

drum pattern. I started getting visions of this darker blueish color when I was listening to

the song. Blue ice and coldness were some words that popped up in my mind. I put

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those both feelings together and it became Cold Nights. This is when I got the first idea

about my EP being two sided, one warmer and brighter and the other one colder and

duskier. Instantly I had the feeling of a male vocalist singing over this. Then I heard a

new song by ZHU & NGHTMRE called Man’s First Inhibition with a rap vocal on it. And I

got the idea that I wanted to try something similar as well. Since this EP was a way of

challenging my production skills and to take my songwriting skills to the next level. Why

not try having a rapper on the EP as well? First out I had problems in finding a suitable

rapper that I wanted to collaborate with me. Several of the people that answered didn’t

feel professional nor had the kind of voice I was looking for. Since hip-hop and rapping

isn’t my main genre of music, I can’t really say any name of a rapper that would have

the sound that I was imagining in my head. But some of my producing friends have said

that Jay-Z comes to their mind after they have listened to the song. Then I remembered

that I was following a rapper on Instagram called Kolo from the USA. We hadn’t talked

that much at all before, so I just sent him a message and asked how everything was

going and so on. Then I told him about this project I was working on and I sent him the

instrumental song. He got back to me a few days later and said that he was interested

but he couldn’t record anything for the next two weeks. I had other projects that I

needed to further work on, so I didn’t mind at all. If we fast-forward two weeks, I get a

message from Kolo saying he’s done with the vocals. I open the email as fast as I could,

since I was so excited to hear what he had made. I was literally mind blown; I couldn’t

believe it. I didn’t have any idea about what I was going to hear but this was far beyond

my expectations. His lyrics, the rhythm and the melody in the chorus were all just

staggering. I was so excited, so I wanted to start working immediately. When I got his

recording, the vocal recording wasn’t aligned to the structure of the song, only in the

correct order when it comes to intro, verse, chorus etc. My first step was to place the

vocals how I was imaging he had planned it and what was sounding good. After that I

got the idea of making adlibs (Ad libitum: latin for “at one’s pleasure” or “as you desire”,

generally speaking it means you repeat certain hooks, or phrases to make the vocal

performance sound more exciting.) and some vocal harmonies. Since I only got one

vocal recording from Koto, I cut out some words that stood out to me and processed

them differently and used a vocal pitcher to change the tone of the voice to create a

harmony. Besides that, I worked with Equalizer, Compression, effects like Reverb,

Delay and some more creative effects to make some parts of the song more exciting

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and refreshing. After a few days of work, I was starting to feel good about the progress,

and I wanted to get Kolo’s view of it. I sent him the song and he said it sounded good

except that the rhythm of the vocals during the intro and in the pre-chorus was off beat.

He also said that the chorus line wasn’t placed the way he had set up, but he liked this

way even more. I went back into my project to change the rhythm for the better, but I

couldn’t get it right. It was hard for us to communicate through text messages and to

fully understand each other. So, I sent him the stems and the instrumental of the song

and I let him line it up correctly as he wanted. The intro become so much groovier after

he made the changes to the placement of the vocals. But the vocals during the pre-

chorus wasn’t feeling that convincing to me. During this part of the song, his rapping

was thundering fast, so it’s surely hard to get the timing right. I asked a friend of mine

who’s a producer for a hip-hop group what he thought about the overall sound and

timing of the vocals. He gave me several good advices about EQuing the vocal a bit

more. One of them was to cut the lows of the vocal to make it feel more “inside” the

song or together with the rest of the elements. Then also the timing in the pre-chorus he

felt were too offbeat so I should cut the vocals and adjust them slightly. After that I sent

a new version to Kolo, just to get his opinion and ask if he’s satisfied with the mixing of

his vocals. He said that: “Love this song man. So glad you reached out to me”. And then

I was finished with three out of four songs. The writing and the production process of

this song has been a long journey, mostly due to the massive number of elements

during the verses. But also, the first time I ever have been mixing rap vocals, which has

been a fun and thrilling experience.

Untold secrets

The process of this song has been like a roller coaster. At the start I had an instrumental

song I made several months prior to the start of these exams. This song had a classic

EDM arrangement: intro, break/verse, buildup/pre-chorus, drop which repeats twice.

The breaks had an emotional, ambient mellow vibe and the drop was more towards the

happy side and a bit chaotic when I think about it now. At first a girl from Peru, South

America called Britt Lari was supposed to sing on it. I meet her on Instagram a while

back through a friend that wrote a song with her. We hadn’t talked that much, but we

had a friendly music connection. Sadly, after two weeks we had talked about it, she said

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that she was too busy and won’t be able to record anything. So, then I was in need for a

new vocalist again. I’m a member of several pages on Facebook with singers and

rappers that are looking for producers to collaborate with. It’s a good way to find new

unknown talents you can work with and create music with. I came across a girl called

Christe which is a singer / songwriter, which recently had made a post with a new cover

song she just recorded. I really liked her voice and thought it would fit well to my song. I

wrote her a message and asked if she would be interested in collaborating with me on

this song. She said that she was really liking the song and wanted to do it. But, yet

again, she also dropped out after just a few days. She said she got a payed offer for

doing a vocal recording for another project, so she wanted to priorities that instead.

Time was ticking away and soon I didn’t have any time to find a new vocalist. I jumped

into a site called Splice, where you can get yourself a membership and you will have

access to millions of samples for music making. Everything from drums, live recorded

basslines, synth patches, choirs and foleys. I searched for a female vocal sample that

could represent the feeling and mood that I was looking for so I could use it as a

reference when I was working with a vocalist. Unfortunately, I did not find any other

vocalist in time, so I ended up using the vocal sample instead. Now when I had the

vocal down inside my DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) FL Studio, I could easily adjust

certain things so everything could fit better. The biggest change that I did first was to cut

down the length of the song by making the verses shorter. Because the song would risk

becoming quite tedious otherwise. I also changed the drum sounds during the verses,

because I wanted something more organic and modern than the sounds, I had at first.

At that point, I was satisfied with how the intro and the verses sounded, but I wasn’t

convinced about the drop/chorus. It just felt a bit out of place, and I wanted to

incorporate the vocals somehow, but I could not get it to sound good. The verses were

quite mysterious and dusky, so the switch up to the happy drop did not feel natural for

me. I ended up changing the whole drop to a new mellow sounding darker moody drop.

I could now incorporate the vocals in a good way and tie everything together.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get any chance to collaborate with someone on this song. But I

still think it was a learning experience, both production wise and time management wise.

Next time I will set aside more time to find a real vocalist.

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The Interviews

I interviewed five different people for this project. My thoughts when deciding which

ones to pick were that I wanted people with different traits and skills. I wanted a

combination of more experienced and less experienced people. The ones with more

experience have several releases in their bag, either with a record label or by

themselves and has done multiply collaborations. I wanted to get as much different data

as possible and get more insights about how the collaborations looks like at a higher

level. The first one I’m going to interview is an American Future Bass / Trap producer

called N3wport. He has many collaborations under his sleeve and several million

streams on Spotify and other streaming services. The second one is a Finish Future

House producer called Triple M. He also has several million streams on Spotify and

have done multiple collaboration with other big EDM artists. The third one is an

American singer / songwriter called Jon Madison, which I collaborated with on two of my

songs on the EP. The fourth one is a Canadian producer under the name Fenoz. I got to

know him through my friend Jon Madison, and he’s an insanely good producer in my

eyes. He hasn’t made so many releases yet or focused on marketing to get the streams

going. So, I believed that it would be interesting to hear his thoughts about this matter.

All these guys are people I have gotten to know through social media and our

relationships have expanded into more friendship rather than acquaintanceship. The last

one I’m going to interview is Hans Olsson Brookes, which is a music producer, mixing

engineer and mastering engineer who have worked with several big Swedish artists. I

got in contact with him through my teacher in Sound Engineering here at my university. I

think his thoughts and ideas will be very interesting to hear, if and how it differs from the

rest. Since, he’s from another era of music and has another approach to his

collaborations. Most of the questions I asked was about how and if you are planning

your collaboration. How do you decide which part shall be done by whom? What kind of

benefits can a collaboration give? Do you write a contract or just do a mutual agreement

between each other? What happens if you don’t get along?

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Results

Interviewees

The majority of all the interviewees agreed that there are several pros when

collaborating with others. One thing that everyone mentioned was that there is a big

chance of you gaining new followers and fans because of the wider range your music

sets. Fenoz said: “Yessir, you gain a friend sometimes and you get some attention by

the collaborators fans”.

You will also have two minds overlooking the whole process, which can make it more

effective and thin away bad ideas faster. There’s also a chance you might learn new

skills along the way by watching the work process of the other. Making new friends,

learning to handle positive criticism and increased confident while working with others is

also things that the interviewees brought up. Everyone also said that working with others

is fun and that’s what they all want.

N3wport said: “When Besomorph and I made our track ‘Zombie’, it was fun and I got to

do whatever I wanted for the drop, so I just went crazy and sent it back and he loved it.

It took us about 3 days from start to finish on that track and it’s still crushing it!”

When it comes to cons most of them didn’t have any, except that sometimes they have

heard of people stealing projects from others and using them on their own. But no one

of them have ever experienced this. Triple M said: “There also has to be trust involved.

I’ve heard stories about artists stealing ideas from others. Thankfully, that hasn’t

happened to me.”

Another thing that was mentioned is that when you are collaborating with others the split

of royalties will be lower since it’s shared among the participants. N3wport said: “I would

say another small con is sharing the glory if the track does really well, but hey both of

you earned it, so share with pride! :)”.

By analyzing the interviewees results I can say that the creative process is unique to

each person individually. Everyone has their own way of working and writing music.

Most of the times when someone wants to collaborate with one other, they usually have

an idea that fits the other collaborators music style. Since, it wouldn’t make sense to

send an RnB Pop song to a Future Bass producer. Sometimes it can just be a short idea

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with chords and basic sounds, and sometimes a full song which is close to finished.

Triple M said: “It all depends who I am collaborating with. If I send track idea to big artist,

I usually send them 95% finished song so they get right impression of the track

(meaning the song is fully produced, mixed and mastered, but still has room for the

bigger artist).”

Another topic was that if the collaboration doesn’t go the way you except it to, there is

usually no harm feelings or problems between each other. People are mostly just open

about what they think and tell the other that it’s not working out. If so, it could be that

one of the collaborators will finish it on their own or it will just be buried.

Jon Madison said: “I try to find a middle ground. If I really don’t like it, I’ll ask if we can try

a different sound or tweak the melody slightly. For the most part this doesn’t happen

because I work with talented people.”

To summarize these interviews, I have learned that collaborations are foremost a

positive thing. You will learn a ton about music making, gaining new fans from my

collaborators fanbase, since the music will be shown on their social medias as well. You

will also be having fun and meeting like-minded people. One negative aspect of

collaborations might be that your share of the profits will probably be lower when

collaborating, rather than releasing music on your own.

My collaborations ON THE EP

I experienced that a collaboration can both be rough and time consuming, but the payoff

is worth it. Sometimes we didn’t always agree on how the arrangement should be, for

example in Summer Days I removed all my synth sounds during the verses to make

room for the vocals to let it be the center point. Another scenario is during the mixing

stage of the song Cold Nights, me and Kolo couldn’t agree on how the timing / rhythm of

the vocals should be. Luckily, we could both compromise and meet each other in the

middle. The song You & Me (In The Afterglow) was probably the one song with the

smoothest outcome. Jon basically just wrote the perfect lyrics and melody for the vocals

and made the song beyond great. Sadly, I didn’t get to collaborate with anyone on the

song Untold Secrets, but it was still fun and educative. During this whole process and

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the creation of my EP I made together with my collaborators. I learned so much about

songwriting and gained several good friends along the way. I also learned that by

compromising you can achieve amazing results, even though it can feel a bit recalcitrant

at that time, it’s worth it for the result. I believe the key to great communication was that

we were open and told each other our opinions, thoughts and exchanged ideas. Since

the most important thing is that we want a result that we both are satisfied with. Cause I

can’t see a point in writing and producing music you are not feeling pleased with. One

thing that I will plan more thoroughly next time I’m doing an EP, or any collaboration with

a singer / rapper. Is that I need to set away more time into finding the proper vocalist

and not rushing it. Since, I don’t want to end up using a Splice vocal again.

I can agree with the interviewees that doing collaborations is something that you should

do, and it is fun and educative. For me personally I can’t see any con at all with it, and I

can’t say that my creative process changed at all. It’s more likely that I get new ideas

and feedback instantly from another person that I can try out. I still kept on working the

same way as I normally do.

Analysis and comparisons

During the process of the songs on my EP I found out that doing collaborations with

others can only be beneficial. All my interviewees are feeling the exact same thing. I

have learned that my songwriting and production process can be more effective and

help you finish songs faster. You have access to another pair of ears and instant

feedback if needed. You will also have a big chance of getting more fans and followers

on your social medias, because of the wider reach your music gets when your

collaborator is sharing it. I have also gained a lot of experience when it comes to

working with singers and songwriters. How the writing process looks like and what I can

do to make the best out of it. Since vocals can be a quite sensitive matter, I have gotten

to know that it’s important to be open-minded and do what you can to make them feel

comfortable. These experiences will be helpful for future projects. Since from now on, I

want to work more with singers and write original songs rather than using samples from

sites like Splice. Then one another important lesson for me is that you sometimes must

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“kill your darlings”, and by that I mean you might have to remove or delete a part or a

sound that you like but it doesn’t fit for the end result. During the writing session of

Summer Days, it was a rough moment when I had to change the arrangement and all

the chords so it would be easier to sing on. One con that N3wport mentioned in his

interview was that he said that by collaborating with others, you will get a lower share of

the income generated by the song. I can understand that, but for me right now I don’t

really care that much about it. Since, I haven’t earned that much money from my music

yet, but I want to do this full time, so earning more money will defiantly help. I don’t know

if this sounds cheesy or naive, but I want to mainly do this for the passion and the

enjoyment of creation soundscapes and evoke emotions in people’s hearts. Money

doesn’t give me happiness.

Discussion

I have found out that there are a lot of pros when it comes to collaborating, all my

interviewees said so and it is probably the common view by most people. When I started

writing this essay, I wanted to get some more insights about how collaborations work for

others. Since, for me, all my previous collaborators usually ended up not being finished.

I didn’t have any specific expectations on what I could learn, mostly just wanted to see

how others work and if they always finish their projects or not. Something that I think I

could have made better for the next time, is to enunciate my questions better, so I would

have been getting a more specific answer regarding the question about if they always

finish their projects or not. As of right now my questions were more about what they do

when a collaboration isn’t working or not. Another interesting approach would also have

been to read and see if there had been any bigger research projects made in this

subject. Or perhaps find a book to read and compare with. Something else that I think

could be an issue that wasn’t mentioned that much from my interviewees, is the split

from the earnings and the royalties. Why didn’t many of my interviewees talk about this?

Did I ask the wrong questions? Or isn’t it that important? Maybe this is something that

could be interesting to research more about in the future.

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The things that I will take away from this project is that collaborations are a good thing,

it’s fun and educative. You will probably earn less money, but your learning curve will be

steeper.

REFERENCES

N3wport Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/1iyaH6NJWncvktAfUcNht8?si=HFKP9GUkT1C5ypYucaev

dQ

Triple M Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/2Tw3Czv2kxEz8h3RILbzjT?si=9LVoRO4sRhKuinz6oRjF

Wg

Jon Madison Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/240cqsfOjSkIXIOOZcNo40?si=aLpjmBczT9Sj7llI1NdwmA

Fenoz Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/4Bzg5gPsYUrp0vW5fFLKLN?si=FBpmB489Qe6wQYv4Kj

lBlA

COLORS EP:

https://soundcloud.com/aymillmusic/

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Questions I asked

1. How is your creative process when you are doing a collaboration compared to

making music by yourself?

2. Who do you usually work with? Songwriters, singers or other producers?

3. What’s most important for you when it comes to collaborations?

4. Are there any benefits of collaborating with others?

5. Do you prepare yourself before a collaboration starts? If so how? Do you write a

contract?

6. How do you set up your collaborations? Do you meet up at a studio or is it only

online?

7. What do you do if the collaboration isn’t turning out the way you want?

8. What are your best experiences with collaborations?

9. How do you approach someone the best way when you want to collaborate with

them?

10. Are there any cons with collaborating with others?

11. Do you have any questions you want to bring up?