Global Patchbay: Developing Popular Music Expertise Through International Collaboration

The practice of music production is by nature, collaborative (Negus 1992, Kealey 1979). Furthermore, the connection which emerging technology now facilitates means that increasing numbers of practitioners collaborate with others around the world (Watson 2014). The way in which they do this is in keeping with Tapscott and Williams’ (2006) concept of peer-production. The collaborative and technological skills to do this are now needed to work in Popular Music production. Furthermore, learning through collaboration with others is an established and effective concept (Bruffree 1999, Gaunt et al. 2013). However, it is rarely practiced in Universities due to a variety of organisational and cultural barriers. This paper shares the practice of Global Patchbay, an initiative aimed to bring together Universities and practitioners around the world and to exploit the potential of collaborative learning in music. The project initially involved partners in the UK and the US, and continues with others from South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Learners have collaborated on recording projects, mixing projects, acoustic design projects and sound design projects using cutting edge participatory technologies as well as common audio production technologies.