Keeping In Touch, Sharing Music

skin · #1 02-13-2008, 07:10 AM

A bit techy: To keep the members easily together, I am considering using Google Calendar for our dates and Hamachi to share our music.

Anyone do anything like this to keep up with the song lists, copies of tunes we are rehearsing, and live recordings of rehearsals and gigs?

What works for you???

www.google.com/calendar

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamachi

Wm. E. Evans · #2 02-13-2008, 07:20 AM

I'm currently band leader for a four-piece acoustic cover band that is still in the rehearsal stage. I use Google Calendars to send rehearsal reminders with a list of songs we'll be working on, and a Google Documents spreadsheet to keep track of repertoire. The spreadsheet is useful because we use it to keep track of who is singing lead and backing vocals, how polished the songs are, notes on arrangements, etc. Also, all group members have access to the spreadsheet, so they can propose a new song at any time. It seems to be working out well.

In the past, I've referred band members to videos on YouTube to learn new songs (which works because we're a cover band

). In the past, demos of originals have typically been passed out on CD, although I did download a set worth of originals off of iTunes one time for a fill-in gig...

All of our band members have ready access to email; I'm not sure how this would work if we had any technophobes in the group.

skin · #3 02-13-2008, 08:02 AM

If you get a chance to review Himachi, it allows you to have a VPN setup at no cost that acts as an extension of your hard drive, just hosted on someone's PC. This machine would be on all the time and have a shared folder for everyone's benefit. You can easily "drag and drop" from it just like it was your own.

The idea about the Google Spreadsheet is a good one. Right now, ours is handled by our lead singer and published as it is updated via email.

jweiss · #4 02-13-2008, 09:46 AM

I just started using Google calendar to keep track of our bookings. I also embedded the calendar on our band web page. It seems to work well.

As far as getting the other guys in the band to use it for something like indicating when they are not available for gigs - I have a hard enough time getting them to return my emails...

skin · #5 02-13-2008, 11:25 AM

I hear ya... we try to have them check email at least once a day... I'm on it several times during the day...

jweiss · #6 02-13-2008, 11:30 AM

I have used Hamachi as part of a project at my real job. When it works, it works well. However we had problems with it from time to time and we finally gave up on it.

An alternative approach would be to use some file sharing web page location. Or set up a directory on your band web page for ftp access.

One In Three · #7 02-13-2008, 01:26 PM

my band uses google calendar to plan out gigs. Any time one of us is going to be busy, he marks it on the calendar. Then if some bar calls up about a date we can give them an answer right away. Works for scheduling practice, too.

skin · #8 02-13-2008, 01:34 PM

FTP vs. Hamachi

My bandmates are not familiar with FTP. Do you use "FireFTP" or something similar so they can do it easily?

Hamachi just seems sooo easy.

jweiss · #9 02-13-2008, 01:44 PM

There are a number of free ftp clients that you can use. Just google "ftp client free".

I use winSCP (which also supports ftp) since some of the computers that I access use scp rather than ftp for better password security.

Most of them are "drag and drop".

Cheers,

Jeff

jweiss · #10 02-13-2008, 01:56 PM

I probably should have mentioned that you need a place to put your files so everyone can access them via ftp. Putting them on one of your computers and using a ftp server software is inconvenient since it requires your computer to be always on.

There are a number of companies that provide free space for web hosting and support ftp access. One example is X10 hosting:

http://www.x10hosting.com/hosting

If you already have a band web page that is hosted by a company like godaddy, you probably have ftp access to that site and can use that host as place to share your files via ftp.

Cheers,

Jeff

Pruitt · #11 02-13-2008, 02:33 PM

I've built a full website/discussion forum/file repository that handles all of this. It's setup so even a person who is on the web for their very first time can get to everything they need (I play with some techno-phobes. lol...). The website is even open to others with music recorded by us and other friends on display, but all the band stuff is in hidden, private areas that no one other then those I give permisssion to can see. It works great and was fun to build too!

skin · #12 02-13-2008, 09:01 PM

Gonna check it out!

Pruitt · #13 02-13-2008, 09:22 PM

Feel free. The site that's up now is actually brand new. I just built it in the last week. The original one I've had up for the last year got hacked a couple of weeks ago, so I had to re-secure the site. Once I did that, I decided to rebuild the site from scratch. I like the new site better than the old one, though it's still not finished. lol...