Show HN: BandHub - The Internet Recording Studio | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: BandHub - The Internet Recording Studio

getbandhub.com

36 pointsPabloOsinaga43 comments

I'm a musician/producer, just got to test this. I think it pretty much nails it for dead simple, fast and furious music collaboration. The interface makes it pleasant to lay down multiple tracks, working well both for people who have used DAWs before and for recording newbies, and while on ideation stage video beats just audio because you can immediately recall exactly how you played a given part (by looking at your fingers/mouth/etc).

I think this has a lot of potential, and one possible use case would be for bands to engage with their audiences directly, asking them to contribute parts to their new songs.

The bands/musicians audience engagement is very interesting - we should probably make it more straightforward to share collaborative song links. While you can do it now, it's semi-tedious that you need to have the app installed first to understand what the link is about.

>> "I think this has a lot of potential, and one possible use case would be for bands to engage with their audiences directly, asking them to contribute parts to their new songs."

I think that's something you'll get very strong opinions on. I personally couldn't imagine anything worse. I like the idea of bringing music creation more public (live streaming recording sessions/producing, releasing works in progress as you create something etc.) but actually crowdsourcing material doesn't make sense to me as a creator or a fan. What I mean is that when you create art a lot of the decisions you make are based on your emotions (e.g. if I'm sad I write a sad song about the thing making me sad). Bringing other people into that confuses things and as a listener I think I'd notice that in the song. I'm not saying the music created would be bad (popular songs nowadays tend to have a LOT of songwriters working on them) I'm just saying it feels wrong to me.

that's interesting

after you make a first crack at your song wouldn't you like to have awesome session musicians play parts?

I didn't think of it like that. I was thinking more from the perspective of having fans of your music actually contribute parts (i.e. lyrics, a verse, a bridge etc.). The session musician idea is an interesting use case and one that I like.

I think you have a valid point, but then the same could be argued for Wikipedia vs. Encyclopedia Britannica or pretty much anything else that's successfully crowdsourced online.

Of course the artist would have to curate at the end and only pick parts he loves and fits his vision for the song, I just know for a fact that there isn't an objectively "right" part for any song, so an amateur kid in a remote country might actually create a bass line that fits the artist's vision for a given song better than what a professional session player has come up with on that specific day the artist had to work with him. It won't sound as good, obviously, but then the artist can re-record it properly. And the positive side effect is, of course, a lot of fan base engagement.

I don't disagree with you. It really just depends on your personal opinion/definition of art. I don't think there is a 'right answer'.

BTW - if you install the app, you can open this song: http://getbandhub.com/?s=524e26a8cc8d46e238000001

And experience:

> Andrew Mason (Groupon co-founder) > Adrian Holovaty (inventor of Django web framework) > me

All somewhat related in this song:

http://getbandhub.com/?s=524e26a8cc8d46e238000001

I've always felt like the world was missing a platform for remote musical collaboration. This is a huge pain point for electronic music producers without access to session musicians or complex recording setups for acoustic drums. As far as I know the only current solution is to buy generic sample packs (yuck) or put out an ad in craigslist and hope someone local responds. A micropayment platform on top of this would be huge. Think odesk for session musicians.

Certainly. For now the micropayment amount is 0 and you can already find pretty decent musicians there.

I'm a person that has spent lots of money on low-latency digital audio interfaces and know from experience that every millisecond counts. It seems like this type of technology always suffers from latency issues. How are latency issue overcome by BandHub?

BandHub is not real time, but rather async. You lay down a track, then someone else lays down another and so on. You record on top of what's already been recorded. It's like a multitrack YouTube so to speak.

EDIT: new tracks show up after ~30 seconds of being recorded by other users. so you can use it for real time production

This sounds awesome, please make a linux version. Or maybe use a format that wouldn't require a specific client for advanced users that already have a favorite client.

That is interesting and opens the whole debate of whether it's best to let people integrate their tools vs having our own experience.

We'd love to find a way to let people use their tools - however, the type of UX that we are going after is 10x simpler than any DAW or recording software out there.

It seems like you're really creating two products, an editor and a collaboration platform. Imagine if Github forced you to do all coding with a custom IDE. That said, the simple UX sounds great, and I wouldn't even have brought it up if there was a Linux client.

> Imagine if Github forced you to do all coding with a custom IDE.

That's a great analogy. Github is a great model: I'd rather do as much as I could in-browser and then only the stuff that requires local access to be done from my tools of choice.

This debate is really interesting and one that I think about a lot.

I think a github for your DAW is a great tool for an audio engineer, or a self-produced / technology-geek musician.

I think a "21st century portastudio" is the best tool for the average musician (hobbyist or pro).

What that 21st century portastudio looks like is up to be seen. But we think certainly not like a githubed-DAW

Thoughts?

Another voice asking for Linux support.

So interesting to see start ups that help w this kind of remote collaboration. An interesting example of globalization. Now a band can be in Toronto, DC and Hong Kong at once. I wonder if the music will be more diverse and interesting

I think there is a "long tail" tendency in all forms of art.

I.e., with YouTube/the internet you can now follow long-tail musicians that you love.

And it will be the same for creation and not just consumption - you should be able to find people to make music with that are truly compatible with your interests/style/taste. Today you are kind of forced to make music with people you meet in high school or whatever.

This looks like really cool technology to bring people together. I wonder if it would be possible to make movies with too by shooting different scenes in different locations and putting the audio all together.

you can use it to shoot video clips - so when you are filming, you hear the music - and it's easy to put all together nicely then ( 10x easier than using video editing software )

Very cool, I had been trying to get together my old band from back in South America but we had not been able to find a way for us to get it done. Looks great, will give it a try this weekend.

Typo on homepage:

"Contribute tracks to other people's songs. Open up your songs for other people's contributions. Clone/version/remix existing songs."

fixed, thanks

I am a guitar aficionado... this app would be great. Remote collaboration with high quality audio online can allow for interesting new music ideas to float.

Each track of the song is recorded separately? It would be nice to change mix settings and replace people

Yes, each track is recorded async/separately. When you record, you do it on top of what's already been recorded.

You can change the mix, but only the original song "creator" can persist that change permanently.

If you want to create your own mix, you can copy the song into a new one that you control fully (mix, remove people, etc.). BTW you can do that with any song already there.

I would have been all over this 2 years ago when my drummer lived 1200 miles away.

isn't it still useful even if he lives close by? aren't there times when it's more convenient for you guys to each do your track at your own time / place ?

note I am not arguing against jamming side-by-side for real - which is awesome. i see it more as a complement

Can I find other people there to make songs together?

yes, you can browse "community songs" other people have posted and add your parts to them

or you can create a new song, record 1 or many tracks and select available musicians you'd like to record in it - or post it back to the community for anyone to chime in

the end result is an awesome YouTube music video

EDIT: here is an example of an end-result YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUjxFWQSn9Q

For recording audiobooks too, I presume?

It is designed to record music, as it enable multiple tracks of both audio and video to be mixed together.

I guess you could be creative and use it for audiobooks where you have a few narrators that take turns :) -- but that would look more like a movie script reading...

jokes aside, it is designed to produce music mainly

Looking forward to the PC version!

We are working on it and will have it ready in a few weeks... Ping me privately (contact info in my profile) if you want to test our alpha PC builds

And by PC are we talking about Windows or Linux or both? I really hope you have a Linux version cooking.

edit: Didn't see the Windows logo besides the notification field. Guess my hopes still apply, even though they might seem slim at the moment. :/

We are working on the Windows version. We haven't started working on a Linux version yet. But at some point we will start working on mobile versions too ( iPhone/iPad/Android )

I guess iPhone qualifies as Linux :)

looks really cool. how does this compare to blend.io or splice?

I share your question. It seems to me both blend.io and splice are all about working on your existing platforms (Pro Tools, Logic, etc) and then syncing project changes to the cloud so that they can get syndicated to everyone involved. This is different, it seems to be all about quick and painless online collaboration, a tool that seems targeted at the ideation phase.

BandHub is not like a github in the sense of sharing / versioning of plain files. it's an integrated product that makes it easy to produce music for both the hobbyist musician (think YouTube musicians) as well as the pro. it is an order of magnitude simpler than most digital audio workstations while retaining 90% of their power.

why not support for real time jamming?

As much as we'd love to support real time simultaneous recording or jamming, the latency in the internet makes it impossible (1)

We do support, however, real-time production. After you record a track, it becomes almost-instantaneously available to other people, so they can record their own on top, mix it, or whatever.

(1) To be extremely fair, you can achieve real-time jamming 1:1 if you buy super low-latency specialized audio interfaces and are connected with someone that doesn't live too far away in an area of the world where the internet infrastructure is awesome. So it could work intra-city in the US or some parts of Europe for example. But it would still be 1:1 and not really for "bands" in the broader sense.

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