I just wanted to gauge the communities thoughts on issues when it comes to collaborating with other producers. I'll start by sharing my personal experience and why it has become a problem for me.
I've been producing for about 6 years now, but I'll be the first to admit that I'm not an expert. My good friend John is a fairly gifted musician who helps me write a few of my tracks as well as DJs with me on the weekends. However John does not have a very developed understanding of how DAWs work (I use ableton), so after we're done recording I take a few weeks to work on mixing and sound design (I like using my own sounds instead of pre-recorded samples or pre-sets). This process works pretty well for us and I really enjoy working with John.
John also has this friend Smith who produces music as well. Smith is very experienced in ableton, and he definitely has better mastering tools than I do. I've also hung out with John and Smith together, and I personally really like the guy. However, Smith's production styles aren't exactly in line with mine. He gravitates towards the more mainstream trap/dubstep/house sound while I prefer to make more unconventional "chill" music. He also uses a lot of pre-sets (not that there's a problem with that), while I tend to rely on all my own sounds. Anyways, I totally respect Smith and appreciate his level of commitment so all 3 of us will jam from time to time.
Not too long ago I was working on a track by myself that was mostly completed and I decided to show it to John and Smith. They really liked the track so we took a crack at mastering it using Smith's tools. We ran out of time for the day so I gave Smith my .als file and said he could keep working on it in his free time. A week or so later John and Smith got together to work on the track and I could not join because I was busy that day. A few days later we all met up again so they could show me what they had done. Basically all that had changed about the track was it was sped up a little, it had been EQ'd in the master, and a few extra drum samples and effects had been added. The thing is, I actually really liked what they had done with it. By all means it was a decent track. However, it just wasn't my style. I had chosen the original BPM for a reason and they had changed what I considered to be a relaxing song and turned it into a dance track. It couldn't really be considered a remix because it was already so similar to the track that I made, but it was definitely a different direction than I would have taken it. But again, I liked it, so I told them there were a few minor tweaks that needed to be done to it before release, but otherwise it was pretty much finished. I never got around to making those changes, but a few weeks later they went ahead and uploaded it to SC.
So now I feel pretty uncomfortable about the whole collaboration effort. John seems to work really well with both me and Smith individually, but I just think the 3 of us combined don't creatively mesh well together. I know that John and Smith both want me to be a part of the trio, but sometimes I just feel that I'm losing creative control of my own projects.
So I'm asking, has anyone else had these types of experiences while collaborating with others? Am I just being a push over by not taking creative control? Am I just being petty? Should I talk to them about this and risk making it awkward between the 3 of us? I definitely don't want to put John in that position. I feel a little bit conflicted and figured this was a good place to ask about all this.
TL;DR-How do you bring up creative differences to people you collaborate with?
Submitted December 08, 2016 at 02:33PM by edmprodthrowawy https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/comments/5h88cq/collaboration_issue/?utm_source=ifttt
Javier Rodriguez
Thursday, December 8, 2016