Kalabo: Making Online Music Collaboration Possible

February 8th, 2009 in News, by Head Honcho

There is a rare video on YouTube showing a jamming session by the Beatles members. In the video, Paul McCartney and John Lennon were plucking seemingly random - but still catchy - string of melodies with their guitars. The video gives us a glimpse of how the great band made their timeless music. The collaboration of the four members of the band - musical geniuses all - spawned hit after hit which can still be heard on the airwaves today.

Collaboration is not uncommon in the music industry. But there is a website which makes it possible for any musician to work and team up outside the four corners of a music studio - Kalabo.net.

Kalabo is an online service that allows musicians of all skill levels to collaboratively mix and modify each others original work.

By registering as a member, you can download original free tunes contributed by others. You can mix the tunes or record your own tracks over them. If you have your own composition that you want to share, you are more than welcome to do so, so that others can download it and mix them as well. The music found in Kalabo is licensed under Creative Commons Non-Commercial Sampling Plus License. This means that while any song downloaded is free, anyone uploading his creation does not have full copyright over his work.

Kalabo is still in its beta stage. As such, the number of members and downloadable songs are not yet sufficiently numerous. Still, the crowdsourcing concept of musical collaboration online that is being pushed by Kalabo is a great idea. Musicians would do well to contribute to this laudable site.