Interviewer: Yeah, let’s call it what it is. The pandemic has been challenging for a lot of people, but if this pandemic happened out of no 10 years ago, we would not be able to get nearly as much done the work from home thing will be a lot tougher. The technology wasn’t really there. How about if you’re a musician? Oh my goodness. All you want to do is jam with your friends, make some great music together. How do you do that when you’re not next to them? Well, our next guest has been working on technology to do this for years before the pandemics, and now the pandemic hits and they’re here just in time.

Interviewer (00:30): Certainly Sessionwire is here just in time. Colin Wiebe joins us right now from Mexico. He’s the President and CEO of the company, and we’re so happy to connect with him. Colin, really good timing. Tell us all about the software. I mean, you’re really making something possible for musicians that has never been possible before.

Colin (00:50): Yeah. Well, first of all, musicians have been hit hard in this time, as you know, and you know, all my gigs for 2020 were canceled and a lot of them for 2021. So I really understand, you know, what musicians are facing right now. And especially for musicians that record for a living, whether they’re a session player whether they’re a mix engineer, whether they’re a producer they’ve been locked away where they haven’t been able to communicate with others, what Sessionwire has allowed musicians and, and other types of content creators to do is to connect remotely. And it’s similar to Zoom with high-quality audio. And it also has a talk-back system like you would in a regular recording studio. You know, when you’re behind the glass, you have headphones on and you’re talking to somebody and you can actually coach them through their musical part.

Colin (01:42): But what Sessionwire also does, is it connects your Digital Audio Workstation if you know what that is, it’s your recording software in your computer. Yeah, your DAW. And so I could hit press, play and record here and be recording you where you are or vice versa. You could be recording me is I’m tracking and playing here. Now currently Sessionwire is just Mac only, MacOS, but the Windows® version is already being tested right now. It’ll be available in the new year for sure. We’re going to cover,

Interviewer (02:15): I’m a PC. So that makes me happy. I can’t play any instrument whatsoever. However, should I, that’s great that, that option’s there and that’s going to be available pretty soon, which is awesome. I mean, the musicians must be so thankful that this exists. What’s the feedback you’ve been getting.

Colin (02:35): You have no idea. We got a contact from a friend of mine. Who’s a producer out in Winnipeg and that’s kind of right in the middle of Canada, it’s cold, it’s frozen. And he had no more gigs and obviously people couldn’t travel into a studio. So he used Sessionwire and he discovered a band there, a sensation on Tik Tok. There’ll be a little video and article coming out about that soon, but basically, he phoned us up and said, Hey, Sessionwire saved my career and we did the whole album online remotely. So it’s been huge. And he’s not the only one, there’s many, many people that have said the same thing. They’ve been able to just connect just like you would in a regular studio, but something different has happened, which we were kind of unexpecting and that is, people are discovering other musicians around the world that they never would’ve been able to communicate with. When you sign up for Sessionwire, you get a profile account kind of like LinkedIn for musicians, and you can start to discover other people and what their talents are. So for example, I love to tell this story that was at the NAMM show last year, which is a big music trade show. You might’ve heard of it. And I ran into the sax player that played for Prince for many years. Wow. In conversation, he said those magic words to me, nonchalantly, “Hey, if you ever want anybody to play sax on your record, just hit me up”. So I did on Sessionwire. He’s got a Sessionwire account, I found him in there. I did a call. It’s kind of like calling on Skype. You find the little call button, call them. And next thing you know, he’s playing sax and I’m producing in the studio and he’s, he’s riffing away and sure enough, he’s on my new album. I’ve got Prince’s sax player playing on my record and remotely

Interviewer (04:30): It’s literally fascinating. I tell you how this could change. You know, you think of the idea of recording an album and you’re flying in musicians from all across the country, say, you know, into L0s Angeles that doesn’t necessarily have to be the case. Also, I’m thinking of all the amazing duets that could happen vocally

Colin: (04:47): This is a possibility to be in the same room as you’re making a recording. There are ways of doing it by Dropboxing and stuff like that. And session where it does have a drag and drop system that you can just drag your file right on my face or your face. And it just immediately sends, you can put it into

JJ: Yeah, put your file on my face.

Colin: Yeah, put your file on my face and then, all of a sudden we’re tracking. And for songwriters like myself, I love to be able to coordinate and because we have the two-way video conferencing like we’re doing right now, plus you can record the high-quality audio at the same time. I can be coaching somebody or they can be coaching me saying, Oh, I liked that chord, play that one again. And you know, you can kind of go through the same kind of system that you would in a real recording studio. And that’s what Sessionwire was developed to do. And now you can do it from anywhere in the world. It really is

Interviewer (05:44): Amazing. And it’s great getting to talk to you. I know a lot of musicians have been writing a lot during this pandemic and putting their pen to paper. Now they can actually produce from home as well, which is awesome. Thanks to your technology. It’s great. Thank you.

Colin (05:58): That was a great thing to be able to do is when my gigs were canceled, I actually finished my record and thanks to Sessionwire. I could do it.

Interviewer : (06:06): All right. You want to learn more about Sessionwire you can go to Sessionwire.com and sign up for a free Creator Plan account! Very, very cool technology.