Highnote is a free collaboration platform for musicians, producers, and teams.
Collaboration is vital in music, although I’m sure some multi-instrumentalists/producers/engineers out there might disagree. But personality is a big part of musicianship, and having different personalities come together in performance, is typically better than a one-person band.
The trouble with collaboration is that you’re no longer just on your own schedule; you have to work around other people and find a way to keep everyone in sync (often from a distance).
Online collaborations are always at risk of misunderstandings that can drastically delay or even end a project.
Highnote is offering a way to take those misunderstandings out of the equation.
It allows you to create a space where you can share your sound with collaborators or anyone else whom you might want to give feedback. You can share full songs, sections, multiple revisions, and ask for general or specific feedback.
The feedback comes in real-time, but more importantly, it can be timestamped. Timestamping can avoid misunderstandings if you are concerned about a particular point in a track or a collaborator suggests a change.
If a collaborator has an idea for a new melody, they can record over your audio, re-upload it, and let you hear it straight away.
Obviously, you can do similar things through email. I could send a track for you to record the melody over and wait for you to send it back. But it’s easier to be lazy when everything isn’t in one place. You might end up with your guitarist emailing you a melody without the backing track, and it could sound terrible out of context. In which case, you’d be scrapping a good idea for no reason.
There are many ways things can get messed up when working via email. I’m sure we’ve all used email and been certain we’d start new threads for specific topics, and before we know it, the thread is a mile long, discusses too many topics, and the thing you need to find is lost amongst everything else.
Highnote makes it easy to have everything in one place but also makes sure everything is well-organized and easy to find.
If you’re like me, someone who starts well-organized but doesn’t always finish that way, it has to be worth a try.
Anything you upload to Highnote remains 100% yours, but the platform will collect usage and analytical data. If you prefer something in plugin form, you could try Mixup from Puremix.
Highnote is currently in Beta; although fully functioning, improvements are likely to come.
More info: Highnote (currently in beta, free to use)
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5 Comments
Jed
on“Anything you upload to Highnote remains 100% yours, but the platform will collect usage and analytical data.” ….Another sector for studying musicians behavior and selling all those data to major Audio Companies. Nice try.
Brenny C
onYeah, it’s a hard pass from me.
Matthew
onAre there any decent alternatives?
pacman
onE-mail or maybe Miro?
Hazy J
onSatellite Sessions VST from MixedInKey. It runs in your DAW and is MUCH MUCH better than this. Basically, it allows remote collaboration and syncs up ANY daw. FL to Ableton, Studio One to Pro Tools. Anyone can work with Anyone.