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The Architect's Blog
January 16th, 2009

Think: Song Project Details - Details

In my last post I talked about creating a new song project in VRS. In this post I'd like to talk a little about filling out the project details after you have created your new song project.

Once you create a new song project in VRS, you are immediately taken to the Song Project screen. You can also access this screen from your song projects list in the VRS "Music" Tab, by clicking on your project. This is the screen that you will access the most when actually collaborating on each song. The Song Project Details screen is the largest and most complex (yet still very easy to use) part of VRS. It will take a few post to really describe the abilities of this screen. But in this post I just want to talk about the very top of this screen - The project definition and details. As I thought about the idea of collaborating over the Internet on a song - I tried to emulate what a group of mixers, musicians, and a producer might do in a physical recording studio (thus the name: Virtual Recording Studio). In a physical recording studio a producer usually has control over the direction of the song. A mixer makes mixing decisions. And each musician has responsibility for their individual tracks. This idea formed the core of three different levels of access in the song projects screen: Producer, Mixer, and Musician. I will discuss those roles even more in future posts.

Code

Coding these three separate roles was fairly complex. I thought a lot about the roles that each member would play in the process of recording and mixing a song. I wanted to make sure that the song project screen was flexible but that it had a clear separation of roles to avoid arguments among project members. I though about making the permissions even more flexible, but I decided that having pre-defined roles would make VRS much easier to use, and that the members could focus on the song itself, and not the administration of who can do what. The three roles I decided on were: Producer/Creator, Mixer, and Musician.

The VRS member that creates the project is the Producer. The Producer has full control of the project. The Producer names the project, creates the NDA (if there is one), enters the description, and decides whether this project is public or private. The Producer can also add or remove any Mixers or Musicians, change the BPM, and add remarks to the project. Some of these (and other) abilities are ONLY available to the Producer.

If a member is added to a project as a Mixer, that member can add new (but not remove) Musicians, remove themselves from the project, and add remarks to the project.

If a member is added to a project as a Musician, that member can only remove themselves from the project, and add remarks to the project.

There can be only one Producer per song project. There can also be two Mixers, and 16 Musicians.

Repeat

Once I defined these three basic roles, they soon became the basis for other project details. For instance, a Producer can not only add tracks and mixes, but they can also delete any other project members' tracks or mixes. And ONLY the Producer can edit the song chart, upload the FINAL project mix, or delete the entire project. Mixers can also add mixes and tracks, but can only delete their own mixes and tracks. And a musician can only upload and delete their own tracks. VRS members can play different roles on different projects, and VRS will automatically determine their access levels for that project. In this way, VRS emulates a physical recording project by recognizing that each person can play a different role on each song.

VRS members will find that these roles play a part in many other VRS concepts. For instance, if one VRS member "blocks" another member, the "blocked" member cannot join any project where the "blocker" is the Producer. But they CAN join the project if the "blocker" is a Mixer or Musician. In VRS parlance - the project is central, and the Producer maintains the greatest control over that project. Since the Producer owns their song projects, things like the "disk space" used by a project are attributed to the Producer.