BUILDING BEATS WORKSHOP LEADER & MUSIC PRODUCERS PLAYPLAY & VAUGHN LEVI DEMONSTRATE HOW TO COLLABORATE IN REAL TIME USING SOUNDTRAP’S SYNC FEATURE. SOUNDTRAP IS A FREE BROWSER-BASED MUSIC PRODUCTION PROGRAM THAT YOU CAN ACCESS ON YOUR LAPTOPS, PHONES, AND IPADS USING THE CHROME BROWSER.

Collaborating in Soundtrap is super easy and a feature that most major DAWs are currently lacking. Once you get the hang of this, you can collaborate on as many tracks as you like, with as many people as you like!

We have been relying on this feature heavily for our virtual workshops with youth over the past year, and students are able to quickly and easily work on music production projects with each other. Also, PlayPlay has been running our Building Beats Airbnb experience, Virtual Beatmaking for Beginners, since the beginning of the pandemic and has been using this feature nonstop with people from all over the world.

Here’s how to get started with using this important feature:

First, make sure all collaborators have a Soundtrap account. If not, have everyone sign up - it’s free and quick to create an account. Once all collaborators have their accounts set up, have one person create the studio project and ask for everyone else’s user name or email that they signed up with. (Tip: your user name is the first part of the email address you signed up with.)

The person who created the account will head over to the right of the screen where they will see the purple music icon where the loops are located, and right below that is a blue-green people icon. This is where you will be collaborating. Click on “Invite” and plug in your friend(s) names/emails.

You will see when your collaborator(s) begin to arrive in the session and you will hear a “whoosh” sound as well as see a green dot next to their icon. At the bottom, you can also type messages to communicate with everyone in the session.

Now that everyone’s in, it’s time to get in the rhythm of syncing changes. When one person makes a change to the project, they will see a message in the collaborators box that says “You made changes” and a sync button will appear. Once that person clicks the sync button, everyone else will get a message that also includes a sync button. You should press the sync button to sync that person’s changes before you make any changes to the project.

Once you get into the rhythm of pressing the sync button and coordinating with each other via the chat box, collaborating in Soundtrap becomes fun and easy!

Check out our video to see how PlayPlay and Vaughn Levi’s collaboration turned out, and then take a peek at some of our type beat tutorials!