I ended up starting a band with my friend Tim via a Slack channel I have with some friends. We had no plans to start a band, but some jokes about band names suddenly led to him making a drum beat during his lunch break, and then me sending it back to him with a bass line a day later. Tim and I have never played music in the same room together, and he hasn’t been in a band or a recording studio since high school. This project has been done entirely by sending tracks back and forth, and typing messages to each other about the parts and what to do next. This aspect was really interesting for me songwriting wise, as it really opened the doors to a lot of possibilities that I’ve never considered while writing songs in the same room as a full band. I’ve always approached writing rock music as a live piece, and these songs were written entirely with the studio production in mind, with no limitations to how many parts their could be at any given time. It was also a great opportunity to rethink any song ideas we had and chop them up and repurpose them as we saw fit. Certainly the second song is long way from the minimalist reggae song it started out as, due to moving parts around, and creating new parts via the editing of older ideas. This project has also been done only on virtual instruments, which I think helped the process of using the studio as a songwriting vehicle. I also enjoyed explaining and walking Tim through some concepts and instructions since he had to write and record his parts on his own, at home. It was a great exercise to explain to Tim how he should record or re-record his own parts, and work together to make songs that we both like. I’m really happy with how these sound given the circumstances, and using a new process for songwriting was very illuminating. Excited to work on more tracks for this project, and if for some reason you hear this and want to sing on them, get in touch.