Writing Samples

Collaborative peer-to-peer music-making

From the beginning of his legal battles, Shawn Fanning made Napster a poster child for the development and promotion of unsigned artists everywhere.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), from the start of its lawsuit insisted that, "Napster is about facilitating piracy and trying to build a business on the backs of artists and copyright owners".

While the appeal of Napster for many users has waned with the filtering of songs and artists listed by the RIAA, Napster still plays on as a town square for the world's growing independent musical communities.

If you've turned on your copy of Napster lately and checked out the browser section of the client, you will have found an ad encouraging you to, "collaborate and share music with thousands of other musicians..."

A company called Tonos makes that collaboration possible with its contribution to the peer-to-peer movement — a piece of client software called TC8. TC8 is a simple eight-track recorder that runs on your PC. Like a standalone eight-track recorder, TC8 lets a musician record track by track, layering instruments on top of one another until the song is complete. TC8 is not exactly a high-end recording system but, then, neither are the standalone recording devices it was designed to emulate. TC8 gives the musician enough creative berth to rough-out a composition so that it can then be taken to the next stage: collaboration.

Before the TC8, if you wanted to coordinate a musical project, you would have the members of the band close by so that they could get together to bang out ideas, try different arrangements or just jam. Tonos and the TC8 takes that geographical dependency out of the picture with a centralized Web-based collaboration system. Tonos asks that you create a profile so that other members can know what instrument or instruments you play, the genre in which you prefer to play, your major influences, a detailed bio and whether or not you will be using Tonos to help locate people to work with.

When you have taken the composition as far as you can, simply click on the TC8's 'upload music' button. From there, you are whisked to the Tonos Web site where you are prompted to upload the project's MP3 file and give it a name. The TC8 file is uploaded to the Tonos servers where it waits for fellow musicians of like mind. If you're just looking for some inspiration or a challenge, searching for a project by genre will return a list of artists who are looking for help with their projects.

Tonos uses membership fees to fund the community. For (US)$29.95 annually, you get the TC8 digital eight-track recorder, access to the musician's network and 40 MB of Web-based disc space to store projects. If you want to use the TC8 and not use the collaboration network, the recorder is a free download from Tonos and it won't expire after the 30-day introductory trial of the collaboration network.

As a musician, myself, I have tried quite a variety of recording software packages and I've found that TC8 works really well, even with a consumer-grade sound card. If you're a guitarist, the effects that come with the TC8 will be no mystery to you. TC8 ships with standard chorus, overdrive, compression and reverb. (If you play guitar, you will probably want to add your effects at the pre-amp stage.) Even if you are not technically inclined, the TC8 software can be up and running in no time. If you do need a leg-up on how to use it, the Tonos Web site has an animated flash tutorial that covers most of the features of the TC8.