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<\/p>\nIn 2020, working remotely is commonplace. Even before circumstances required it, many people found that working from home could be just as efficient as showing up to a formal workplace. Creatives and musicians, of course, have known this for longer than most. Elton John and Bernie Taupin famously collaborated by mail for years, putting words and music together without being in the same room.<\/p>\n
Today, technology has made remote collaboration even easier. It\u2019s now commonplace for, say, a guitarist to record his or her lead parts in a home studio and then email a high-resolution WAV file to someone else, who in turn adds those parts to a track already in progress. Entire albums \u2013 good<\/i> ones, even \u2013 are made by musicians who\u2019ve never met in what we used to call \u201creal life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some artists have taken this concept even farther. Celebrated video producer, songwriter and musician Kevin Godley (10cc, Godley & Creme) is one such artist. And it stands to reason that Godley would push the boundaries of the creative process in this way. \u201cI straddle so many different mediums,\u201d he explains. \u201cMusic, film, writing, video, and so on and so forth; I sort of hop from one thing to another.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Around 2015, he was contacted by a couple of musicians with whom he had no previous communication. \u201cI think they were both reaching out to people who they would like to work with,\u201d he explains. \u201cI was on both their lists. So they sent me a couple of instrumental tracks for a project they were working on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Godley was intrigued, and he found the subsequent experience of remote collaboration a creatively rewarding one. The success of that project sparked a bigger idea. \u201cMy thought was, \u2018Okay, if I’m a natural collaborator, why don’t I put this out to the general public instead of professionals?\u2019 Because there are so many people who make music on their own in their bedrooms and [who] have mastery of instruments.\u201d He thought it would be even more interesting to open the concept up to a wider group of potential participants.<\/p>\n
Godley explains that the project \u2013 which would come to be known as Muscle Memory<\/i> \u2013 consisted of two ideas at play. \u201cOne was to try to get some samples of music in from people, and the other one was to raise enough money to actually finish the album,\u201d he says. Fans would provide the music, and Godley would write the lyrics.<\/p>\n
So in summer 2017, he put out a call to fans, inviting them to collaborate with him on songwriting. The response was overwhelming. \u201cI got a lot<\/i> of contributors,\u201d he says with a chuckle. \u201cI got 286 pieces of music sent to me! It was incredible to get that many submissions of music, to hear what people are actually doing out there. Such a vast array of different genres and sounds.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, the platform Godley had chosen to use for this novel collaborative venture was PledgeMusic.<\/p>\n
A direct-to-fan music platform launched in 2009, PledgeMusic was designed to connect artists and fans in the early stages of creative projects, providing financing for recordings while affording fans the opportunity to support and interact with their favorite artists. While it wasn\u2019t created with the idea of the sort of collaborative project Godley had in mind, PledgeMusic\u2019s infrastructure seemed a good fit for Muscle Memory<\/i>.<\/p>\n
But as fans and potential songwriting collaborators signed on to the Muscle Memory<\/i> project, PledgeMusic was going down the tubes. Financial mismanagement led to the platform shutting down in July 2019 and declaring bankruptcy soon thereafter. Several artists \u2013 including alternative rock band Failure, multigenre composer John Zorn, musical satirist Neil Innes and Kevin Godley \u2013 went unpaid for money owed via pledges. An untold number of fans who pledged also found themselves empty-handed as well. With droll understatement, Godley says, \u201cThat was a little bit of a disappointment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Happily for all concerned, State 51 Conspiracy (\u201can unusual company,\u201d says Godley) approached him with an offer to provide financing to finish Muscle Memory<\/i> and release the album. So Godley got to work. And while he says that \u201cat least one\u201d of his collaborators is a name some might recognize (Australian singer-songwriter Gotye, co-writer of \u201cSong of Hate\u201d), his chosen method of working kept his partners anonymous during the process.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I started listening, I didn’t want to know who<\/i> was sending me the music,\u201d he explains. \u201cBecause I didn’t want to be influenced by names. I would listen to something, and [decide] whether I felt I could work with that particular piece of music or not.\u201d Only once a song started coming together would he let himself know who had submitted the material. \u201cIt was a matter of trial and error,\u201d Godley says.<\/p>\n
The songs didn\u2019t all come in at once. \u201cMaybe three or four one day, ten on another day, next week nothing, then five,\u201d Godley says. \u201cI was peeling them off as they came in, taking notes about each one, and putting them into separate lists of preferables, potentials and definitely-nots.\u201d<\/p>\n
Godley says that a few submissions had the feel of having been written to conform to what people might have thought his music should<\/i> sound like. \u201cI maybe got about half dozen that I could sense they were trying to give me something that they thought would attract me,\u201d he says. But those ran counter to the instructions he had provided: \u201cDon\u2019t send me anything normal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Instead, Godley says that he was interested in submissions that didn\u2019t stick to the \u201cverse, chorus, verse, chorus, middle-eight, verse, chorus, end\u201d format that characterizes conventional pop songs. \u201cSo I got extremes,\u201d he says. \u201cI also got stuff from people who didn’t quite understand the brief: they sent me finished songs, which was kind of not really the point.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the end, Godley found himself with a remarkable amount of material with which he could work. \u201cAnd it was a lot of fun,\u201d he says. \u201cIn many cases, I had an idea, but it half<\/i> worked. So I’d park that one and then I’d try another track with the same lyric and it worked much better.\u201d It was a daunting process, but a novel and creatively fulfilling one. \u201cMaking music is like sculpting air,\u201d he says. \u201cI’ve just got 286 pieces of air to play with in this case. But what a great experience.\u201d<\/p>\n