Collaboration

Summary

Philosophy: I am very interested in collaborating with like-minded artists to make dope music together.
Finance: Let’s use collaboration to build together and make dope music without either party paying the other. Let’s all benefit if our music blows up.
Credit: I am interested in growing “AX MADWICK” as an artist / brand, but I am also interested in contributing to other artist’s projects. Again, let’s make some dope music together and then figure out how credit will be handled.

Philosophy

I have been collaborating with others to make music since I was in middle school 25 years ago, playing guitar in a band with my friends.

Since then there have been countless other bands and collaborative musical projects that I have been involved in. I like to collaborate with others on music because, as the idiom goes “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts”. To be more specific when collaborating, each party brings their own creativity and strengths to the table. For example, I have a background playing drums and guitar, so I am pretty good at programming drum rhythms or composing lead instrument solos when producing. I also have a music technology degree and have taken 4 semesters of music theory so another one of my strengths is arrangement and structuring. But I know from years of experience that I’m not very good at singing (here’s a passable example of me singing, I have very little range) and there are many instruments I do not know how to play.

Collaboration leads to outcomes that it wouldn’t have been possible for one party to achieve on their own.

Through encounters with other artists, I’ve observed that not everyone has the same interpretation of collaboration. As such, I’d like to be up front and share how I view collaboration for any potential collaborators.

Money / Finance

In all successful musical collaborations I’ve been involved in over the course of 25 years in music I have never paid or been paid by another artist for collaboration. If we are working together on music we are a team, and we are in it together. First and foremost, let’s make something dope together without money being exchanged in either direction.

Secondly, as we all know, independent artists are making basically no money from streaming services. As such, I’m not really expecting to generate any revenue from my music. But in the off-chance that anything we make blows up, all parties involved in creating the music should benefit. The split should be determined before release based on both how much each party contributed, and also what, if any, resources either party will be investing on promotion. Generally speaking I am turned off by contracts. Let’s be civil and respectful of each other and come to a reasonable agreement.

Credit

One of my goals is to build “AX MADWICK” as an artist/brand like Kaytranada or Madlib has done.

I think this is more difficult for producers than for rappers/vocalists as producers are usually not listed as primary artists when music is released. Many producers use “tags” on their beats for exactly this reason, which I feel cheapens the music.

For truly collaborative endeavors I am a proponent of the Freddie Gibbs & Madlib approach where the music is released with both the vocalist/rapper and the producer as primary artists. However I’m not opposed to contributing my music to other artists projects as long as they support my mission to build a name for myself.

Again, first and foremost, step one is let’s make something dope. Then let’s take a look at what we did and agree how our artist names will be included / featured / credited on a case-by-case basis based on the level of contribution each of us had.

Let's Connect

Contact me about collaboration, questions about my music, or anything else you'd like to discuss