Virtual Oasis - thoughts and experiences about online based music production and collaborative writing techniques

Online collaboration and co-writing is then the main subject of this paper and what follows is largely based on self-experiences of writing and making recordings online. This is an ethnographic study of sorts, although I must stress form the outset that it has not been written as a deliberate piece of research, as say a structured process of participant observation such as valuable work conducted in the field of music production and ethnomusicology (Porcello, T 2005 and Torino, T, 2008). My thoughts have come largely from a series of experiences of online recording which worked out and others which did not. In looking at this from a self-reflexive viewpoint I started to consider the significance of rhetorical exchange as a key element in online communication (Jackson & Wallin, 2009). My main argument, I would not like to call it a thesis, as this paper should not be taken as a blueprint for creative musical collaboration online, rhetoric is a relevant issue worth considering in creative collaborations. Before elaborating on this through a case study of works made jointly with Dub Caravan, known as ‘Virtual Oasis’, it is pertinent by way of introduction to outline a dilemma that troubles many people regarding the Internet age in which we live. In some ways this quandary confirms the value of rhetorical exchange in our contemporary lives