- Make clear what the project is about and who's responsible for individual parts
- Make sure you make it clear what the collaboration is about. Is is a recording, mixing, arranging, songwritting or all of this. It's also good to clarify to everone involved what this collaboration isn't. So it does not drift into too much experiments and creative ideas that are off course in time, style and money. You can achieve that in initial pre producion meeting when you address expertise of individuals and give them a container to work in. A nice add-on is a clear KPI for eveyone. For example, a drum beat that sound or feels similar to XY artist you introduce and is finished due two weeks using original samples or maybe a specific sample library. When you make goals (KPI) clear it's harder to drift off course. Highly recommended. It's also a good think to know who has a "veto" to a particualr part of collaboration or the overall project deliverables.
- Create creative and technical guidelines
- We'll use this or that DAW
- Sample rate will be XY
- We'll export in stems
- We'll share files in this or that online storage
- We'll write comments in this or that collaboraton tool. Email get's a bit time consuming after 20 exchanges emails between 3 or 4 people!
- Divide project into parts. For example Intro, Bridge, Chorus and outro. Try finding similar sounding parts in other productions as a guide for all.
- Use visual creative for stearing sound design. For example, chrorus should sound/feel like an Irish landscape
- Check your communication channels
- Is everyone on Skype, FB messenger, etc
- When possible try migrating all relavavant information and conversations into a collaboratin app and use Skype just for scheduling meetings.
- Note your time zones
- Keep expecations in financial and credist clear as day
- Set deadlines and get someone outside the project to oversee it
- It's difficult to monitor and bring up deadlines to creative team. Can be a deal braker. An outsider (a common friend or a professional is best) will keep things less emotional and down to pure agreement