The cloud has been getting a lot of press and advertisement from productivity companies such as IBM, Microsoft, Apple, Google, just to name a few. Musicians can take advantage of the fact that many of these virtual cloud drives will accept any type of file for storage. So how can we take advantage of this?
With music creation and performance being generated in a digital format, the opportunities abound for musicians to share their work. A majority of cloud drives accept any type of file, so mp3 files, pdf files from printed parts, and entire files from Sibelius and Finale can be uploaded. Soundcloud is a virtual music sharing company, which allows your music files to be shared with others quickly, based upon the the type of music you are performing or have created. In many regards, it can be thought of as a large thumb drive on the internet where others can listen to the music you create.
Sharing your work is easy and secure in the cloud. You can give a person permission to view only, edit, and collaborate on many of your music projects, based on the file access permissions you have given the person you are sharing with. As an arranger on a team, this can be a time saver in completing projects on your time schedule. As an example, one composer was listening to a jazz group in Paris. He recorded part of a song using his phone and uploaded it to a cloud based note taking service called Evernote. This notebook is shared with his team back in California, with a note to recreate the jazz style on a project they were working on together, as Evernote records audio, and allows you to jot a few ideas down about it within the note. With Evernote or One Note, you can create a digital portfolio to be shared with others, or to store ideas. Just record your tune, organize it based on style, type, etc., and you literally have a digital portfolio to refer to at any time. One jazz drummer shared many years ago shared that he kept a cassette recorder going when he practiced, recording new ideas as he worked. When he filled the tape with new ideas, he would listen to them and wither discard or figure out how to use the idea in his jazz performance. The cloud becomes your musical idea storage device.
As more people begin to migrate from traditional storage media to digital storage media, the cloud will be there to file and store their musical ideas and give them the capability to share their tunes with others.
