Let's make some plans!

[Jon Schwab]

Hello everybody,

Thanks for joining us! I've been talking to a few of you individually
about plans for the Album Project, and I wanted to set up a place to
share what everyone has contributed so far and set forth the major
questions ahead of us.

Someone brought up the idea of a kind of "job board" where you can
find someone to help complete your work. I think it's a great idea.
As a guitar player, I have a lot of guitar riffs, some with drum
parts, but none that have vocals or bass parts. A talent pool could
be a good way to get the collaboration started.

We've also talked about placing requirements on the minimum number of
participants per track--three for instance--to encourage
collaboration.

I think the album needs to be a three part process:

1) An open call for entries, including finished or unfinished songs.
If a song is in "finished" form, it must be composed of at least two
elements available on the site.

2) An assembly phase, where we figure out which songs needs which
parts added (This is where the job board comes in.)

3) A mixing and mastering phase, where the music is finalized. (By
whom?)

Perhaps we can have a way for someone to "claim" a submission from
step 1 and be in charge of producing the track.

With that said, here are some more important questions:

1) How do we encourage and focus participation?

2) How do we handle licensing/attribution?

3) Are we establishing any technical requirements?

What do you think? What should the process be?

[Devin]

A couple of ground rules will keep the album from getting out of
control. We can always do more albums later, but for this one, let's
say:

max of 10 "songs", where a "song" is:
Max 8 tracks per song for this album
Total length per song <6 minutes
No more than 1/2 the tracks per song from any one person, to keep it
collaborative

So once a thread indicates that there are 8 tracks on an album, that
song is automatically "closed". Once we hit 10 closed songs, the
album is "closed".

I would recommend that all tracks have be tempo sync'ed to some
metronome and time signature, and this has to be specified in the
description. That will make adding new tracks way easier.

Thoughts?
Devin

[Jon Schwab]

I think those are good limits. Should we say "rounds of collaboration"
instead of tracks?

I'm working on a song submission form with the following fields:

-Working Title
- Audio file (.wav, .mp3 or .zip archive with individual tracks
separated)
-Tempo
-Time signature
-Suggested parts to add

Does anything else need to be added (maybe key/chords)? If we wind up
getting a lot of submissions, how should we go about narrowing the
list down to 10?

Jon

[Devin]

Yeah, if possible we'll want submitters to specify chord progressions
in advance. This will reduce the time that anyone has to spend
listening to the tracks in order to understand and add their
contributions.

We need to 'cut it and print it' fairly early on or it will never get
done, at some point the song writing process will become stalled. Any
rules that aid in the process of un-sticking song production should be
considered.

That's why I think one rule has to be first come, first served
(assuming no user contributes more than half of a song) should create
the albums. That way, we can get onto other albums sooner rather than
having a bunch of songs that never get done. If we do this right, we
should easily have a handful of albums quickly -- the basic makings of
a non-evil record label.

[Nathanael Holley]

Hello all,

Perhaps the song submission form should have some indication of what instruments are used on the track and whether they contain lyrics or vocals.

Nate

[Jon Schwab]

Good idea. I'll add it. Is there any info. other than chords,
instrumentation or tempo that could be of use?

What are your thoughts on licensing? Would it be best to just have the
entire album under a Creative Commons Attribution license (http://
creativecommons.org/about/licenses)? If there's a good reason not to
use a CC license, I'd be open to hearing that as well.

How about some ways to encourage participation? I'd love to be able to
offer something in return for everyone who's given their time and
effort, either with a prize of some sort, or even just a promo code
for everyone who works on a song. Any ideas?

Thanks,
Jon