Collaboration is working well at Songbay ‘Coincidence or Fate’?

PEACE Music and Video by Daniel Hall

We recently published an article on our user-Daniel Hall. In it Daniel explained how within only one day of subscribing to Songbay  he’d  received a message from a female vocalist asking if he was interested in a collaboration project. Daniel is based in Australia and  the collaborator -Janne Villaflora from the Philippines.  As Daniel explained: “I was working on a track called “Peace” and thought to myself that this song was perfect for a female vocalist. Coincidence or fate?”

Here in Daniel’s words, we learn how the collaboration took shape:

“I replied to her message and asked where I could listen to some of her material. I really had no idea what I was getting into. She sent me a Soundcloud link and one song of hers really stood out. I just happened to be working on a new track called “Peace” which was nearly complete but I felt it just lacked something. I had already recorded my vocals. When I heard Janne’s voice I imagined it replacing mine and thought ‘yes’ this could really work well-it would sound very ‘Massive Attack’/ Teardrop’ like. I contacted Janne and suggested working together on this new song . She kindly agreed and asked me for my inspiration for the song so that she could get in the mood and do it justice. The plan was to send her my raw Garageband file but she didn’t have this software so I sent her an mp3 of my track with my vocals for her to follow my lead and pronunciation and then an instrumental that she could use to work over. She was a little apprehensive about her ability at first and that the Electronic genre was not her usual style but I encouraged her and said that with her voice she could easily do it and that she might surprise herself. I left it with her for a few days to think about as I didn’t want to rush the process.

She sent me back a few vocal stems which I then placed back into Garageband and edited with reverb and echo effects etc. I am onto something here, I thought and this would be a great new dynamic to my next album. I kept it quite simple so you could really hear her voice. Janne got it right first time. We did it in one take. I sent a copy back to her to see the final result and she was extremely excited. She said – “Thank you so much for the opportunity. The song really inspired me and has a lot to do with my present self. I won’t hesitate to give another collaboration another shot in the future” She even let her Mum hear the song and I received a personal thank you from her to which was very nice. I then sent a copy to my masterer in London who then completed the work on the track. This is the version that you are now hearing. I then completed a great video to go with it, which I have tested on a few websites. All I have had are compliments and very positive feedback on the track so I have entered it into two music competitions already.-Unsigned Only and the Indie International Songwriting Competition. When the 2016 UK Songwriting Competition opens I will also be entering this as I have some success with competition in the past. Janne and I am pretty excited to see how we go. Any acknowledgement is a bonus.”

To purchase the song ‘Peace’ or use it in your productions visit Daniel’s artist page at Songbay today >>

Editorial comment:

Learning of collaborations taking place like this is a real inspiration to us at Songbay and one of the main motivations in creating the company. Each week we become aware of similar collaborations taking place and this makes us very happy indeed!