Indaba: the website for musical collaboration

For students, teachers and others who are musical, I've found a great new website to share with you: Indaba Music.


Indaba Music is described as "an international community of musicians, music professionals, and fans exploring the creative possibilities of making music with people in different places. It makes finding other people, and working on recording, mixing, or mastering projects easier."

So what can you do there?

Right now there are: 6 contests including one to come up with a podcast theme for Indaba and another to create a mix for Stephen Colbert. 4 artists in residence will work with website members. There are numerous musicians and bands looking for people to collaborate on their projects and many special interest groups to join. (I even find an event going on next weekend very close to where I live here in Vancouver, BC.) There is a library of CC music clips to work with so you need not worry about copyright infringement. This website has even been endorsed by Discovery!


As they say on the Indaba web page: "It starts with an idea >> people come together >> they record and mix online >> a song is created." The free version has some limitations: you can only have one temporary session going at a time. For the Pro ($5 per month), you get 3 sessions that don't seem to have limits and their top rate is $25 per month for unlimited sessions. It might be possible to work out a deal for educators, but I haven't yet tried to negotiate that.

How could you use this in school?

• Come up with a theme and open a session for your class: math rap, song of science, create an original composition,remix a collection of CC music found online for a project theme song. They can collaborate with each other online.
  
• Start a group for teachers or music educators.
  
• Invite an artist to do a webinar for your class.
• Remix your school's song.
• Have the students make a how-to video for using some of their tools an post it online.
• Open a session for students all over your city or country to create a song for a special event. Post a notice on Classroom 2.0 that you're looking for partners.
• Collaborate internationally to create an Earth Day song. To find out how to broadcast it to the world, get in touch with the people at the Earth Day Network or Earth Day Interactive.
  

Please add your ideas to the mix by leaving a comment below! OR even better, get back to me with links to your class creations. I'd love to share them online.