If you’ve only ever made music on your own, as a singer-songwriter or solo producer, the notion of partnering up with anyone else can be intimidating. The benefits of collaboration – by which, for the purposes of this feature, we mean actual face-to-face participation in the real world, not its remote online equivalent; and an equal division of labour/credit, rather than just hiring a guitarist or singer – are, however, potentially transformative.

As well as taking your sound and style in new directions that you would never have discovered alone, working in a duo or team can improve your own production skills through the sharing of knowledge and hands-on experience. It’s something everyone should try at some point, and here are some things to bear in mind when you do.

1. Seek Out Like-Minded Musicians… Or Not

Our first tip almost goes without saying, but by and large, you’re going to want your musical partner(s) in crime to share your general tastes and personal outlook, so that you’re essentially coming at the collaboration from the same perspective. If you’re working with a friend or bandmate, such alignment should come quite naturally, but if you’re embarking on a project with an unknown someone you’ve met on social media or through your local music scene, it’s definitely a good idea to meet up for a coffee prior to actually committing to anything, so you can openly discuss your musical proclivities and attitudes, and get a feel for each other’s broader characters. Having said all that, great things can also happen when radically different idioms and approaches come together, so if you’ve always been intrigued by the possibility of merging your own sensitive pop aesthetic with an ambient techno production style, get online and see if you can find anyone local in that realm who might be up for a session.

2. Allocate Roles Appropriately

While we wouldn’t go as far as suggesting that ensuring a complimentary skill set between collaborators is a must (why artificially restrict yourself?), it is usually good practise to figure out who’s best suited to taking the lead on each element of the production – that is, steering the collaborative workflow and decision making process at that point, not taking it over completely. If you’ve got the most experience programming drums and arranging, and your partner is a notably skilled recording and mixing engineer, say, then these delineations should be obvious; but when the specifics of your pooled talents are less clear-cut, it’s still sensible to divvy up the ‘leadership’ arbitrarily, just to keep things focused. It is only a guiding position, though: whoever’s in the chair at any given point mustn’t shut everyone else out and simply take over completely, unless that’s what they’re being asked to do.

3. Have A Plan

The more people that are involved in any creative endeavour, the more important it becomes to formulate a plan and enforce its adherence – to a greater or lesser extent. Naturally, this being music, you never really know what’s going to happen until you get into it, but if you don’t have an actual song written before you start, you should at least get some sort of operational framework in place, setting down guidelines in terms of song length, general style and instrumentation, lyrical angle, mood, mix style (dryness, colouration, depth, etc), arrangement ‘shape’ and anything else that seems relevant. You don’t have to stick to any of it, of course, if things begin to head in a different direction, but setting goals and keeping them in sight is unarguably beneficial when it comes to keeping any creative process on track.

4. Be Democratic And Open-Minded

In any partnership, disagreements are bound to happen, and when that partnership is an artistic one, some healthy degree of push and pull can be good for the end product. However, there will inevitably be the occasional situation in which creative differences become impassable and compromise seems unreachable. How such disagreements should be resolved will depend on individual temperaments, but if bartering with other elements of the track – “Okay, I’ll agree to using that particular snare drum as long as you concede bass sound selection to me” – doesn’t work (highly possible, given that it can easily result in a mishmash of only half-liked ideas), canvas the opinions of other, neutral parties, on the understanding that their judgements must be accepted by all concerned.

Ultimately, it pays to agree on some sort of democratic process for compromise right from the start, so that everyone knows where they stand. What needs to be emphasised here, though, is that prior to conceptual horse trading or outside intervention becoming necessary, everyone must be given a full hearing when stating their case for the qualities of the sound or engineering manoeuvre in question. Don’t just dismiss something that, on the face of it, seems untenable or distasteful – always allow for explanation and context by its proponent. This is a major part of how partnerships develop, after all, with everyone learning from each other and giving ideas the objective space to be fully explored, no matter how awkward that might be.

Of course, if you and your coproducer(s) find yourself spending more time arguing and fighting your respective corners than actually making music, and that fire and passion aren’t palpably represented in the music itself, it might be time to call it a day and move on to alliances new.

5. Make Your Projects Portable

While the experiential and creative benefits of being in the room together are the main driver of any collaborative effort, in the interests of actually getting tracks finished, it can also very helpful for each member of the group to be able to work on the project in progress in their own studios. Perhaps the designated mix engineer prefers their personal monitoring system, or the drummer already has a kit set up and miked in their house. Clearly, Dropbox (or any of its many alternatives) is your friend here; and you’ll all need to own the same DAW so that projects can be shared ‘raw’, rather than as exported multitrack renders (until the point at which such renders or stems become a viable option).

Also, you don’t want two people working on the same DAW project file at the same time and potentially overwriting each other, so some policing of who’s doing what will be necessary. A combination of Google Docs and any basic versioning protocol (copying the project to a new subfolder for each iteration and appending the file with numbers and producer initials, for example) should make that straightforward enough.

What social and organisational tactics do you draw on to make your collaborative sessions as fruitful and productive as they can be? Let us know in the comments.