Narciso Lobo, aka seeso, and Zoe, aka ukulelezo, recorded the song Angel From Montgomery and posted it onto Youtube. The collaboration is remarkable, because Narciso recorded his part in his home in the US and Zoe in her home in Canada. 

Technology makes it possible to record and film a sequence and send it to someone else, who will then add his or her material. That is how Narciso and Zoe created their video. My friend Dan Keller, aka Sultan of String, engaged in a similar collaboration with keyboard virtuoso Joseph Anastacio Glean from California. Dan was looking for a keyboarder to play on his 2004 album Electric Storm and found a great player on the other side of the globe. Since technology made it possible to instant message each other to discuss what to play where, Dan and Joseph didn’t have to be at the same place. This way they didn’t have to travel around and use their own equipment. All they needed to send around were digital files. 

Bass legend T.M. Stevens offers his bass lines to artists, who would like to have him playing on their album. T.M. works in his studio and sends the bass track to his customers and none of them had to travel around. This saves time, money, and you can have a great bass track on your record.

That is also how Alessio Piazza, Simon Kurt, and I work on our music. When one of us has an idea, we record it in GarageBand and then share the file with the others. They work on their parts and share the new version with the others. That way, we can all work on the songs whenever we have an idea, without having to wait for the next jam session. 

“But what about feeling,” you may ask. It is simply a different kind of working. Sure, it is a great pleasure playing live with awesome musicians, or recording an album live in the studio. Nonetheless, a collaboration like the one between seeso and ukulelezo show that the song can be filled with emotions, even though the artists where miles apart when they recorded it.