Brainstorming using GitHub for music with Ubuntu studio and Ardour to record remotely
Last night I had a session with my drummer Rob. We're trying to perfect a method for recording remotely something that we're able to do a little easier.
I've been arranging stuff with the open-source DAW software that we use called Ardour. What we've started doing is recording at home and sharing it to a GitHub repository.
The thought process here is, the software that we use is all written to and controlled by the main file and then the software distributes all the information through the folders it creates to run the software.
The way it works with Github is when each of us record something on our own computer, GitHub knows something happened or changed there. Then I can upload those changes to our shared GitHub repository.
This is how we can share our changes and edits for the working song in one place. We can also set points for every change we make and then the rest of the band can download and have those new changes. That way everybody in the band has them.
I'm a former software developer so it makes sense to me. And it works... kind of? It's not perfect.
I wrote more about the process in detail here
Mainly because GitHub was not something that was created for doing this with music. So this idea is kind of like an experimental method that I came up with. And so far it's working, for us.
And the main reason I wanted to try it too is because none of the guys in my band use this kind of stuff, or have ever worked with a version control system like GitHub. And I'm like, if I can teach them how to do it then there is something to this being a new method of remote recording.
Plus, I like that it works with the open-source tools we have. The band is using an open-source operating system called Ubuntu Studio to record our music. One of the great things about Ubuntu Studio is all the stuff for recording audio comes pre-installed with it.
So all of us in the band install this computer system and have exactly the same setup and software.
For example, our drummer Rob was online with me chatting over video and the main problem with that is over a video chat, you can't work in real-time. There's lag, there's, depending on the person's wi-fi signal, kinds of stuff that makes recording and writing music remotely pretty difficult.
So what I figured we can do is, take turns and listen while the other person is playing and recording stuff. Rob had downloaded the newest version of a song from our GitHub repository that I was working on. I told him it needed drum parts. So he has his electronic drumset set up at his house, I could hear it through the headphones. He downloaded the version of the file of the recording that I did and then played along with it.
We ended up writing and recording a new drum part. So it worked out!
That actually was like, ah-ha! So now he's able to record his part, upload it to the Github repository. And now I can download it and it updates the song version I have in my Ardour DAW. That's the concept.
Me and Rob just worked on it and it was, it was great! We were collaborating. It's sort of like when me and him meet up at the studio. We just kind of listen to the song, go okay, what can we do to make this better?
So pretty, pretty pumped about how this is working so far.
Tom
I explain more about the technical process in this post on our site - https://www.lorenzosmusic.com/2019/05/how-we-came-up-with-way-to-use-github.html
