Artistic workflow has been changing quite dramatically over the last year. Making audio tracks for new Music Theatre works used to be a bit of an after thought, but since we are all collaborating remotely these days it's becoming more and more part of our processes. It doesn't seem that long ago that we'd all gather around the piano with sheet music in hand for our early rehearsals. Nobody was focused on producing audio recordings, but now it's all done online (digitally) and we can just save the parts for mastering at a later date.
Unfortunately, online latency issues between computers really prohibits audio from multiple sources in real-time So we use small in-home studios with audio software to record and deliver our tracks remotely. This too can be a bit troublesome, since everyone seems to use a different DAW and organizing all the files for your project is not for the faint of heart.
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| WYSIWYG Workflow Schematic |
Over the last several months, the Performing Arts Project has been using the online collaboration software known as Soundtrap. The cloud-based application allows our development teams to work on their scores while the actors add their vocal parts in a cloud-based DAW. Once the parts are approved by the producer the audio mastering team creates the master tracks for the show.
Soundtrap has built-in notifications that can notify each participant when the project has been updated. This sort of functionality has been utilized by project managers in business for quite some time and is now being used to streamline the unique requirements found in an artist's creative workflow.
