Collaboration on the Tracks: Ethnographically-Informed Design for Computer-Assisted Music Collaboration between Producers and Performers

We suggest that more attention should be given to how musicians collaborate in the studio when designing Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs). We conducted an ethnography in a home studio, gathering three hours of video recordings over four consecutive days of a pro-amateur performer-producer duo during the writing of their debut album. Focusing on how performers and producers structure their interactions around the audio playback of the DAW whilst composing, this paper analyses how their relationship to the software might change their interactions, towards establishing common ground in conversation. Field notes are analysed, and a design brief is suggested where control of the playhead is given to the performer, potentially allowing them to use the audio playback within their utterances to help reference specific audio sections, even when they are not near to the DAW.