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Classification:
Educational music-oriented collaborative environments
Country:
Description:
The MODEM community is for european artists who wish to colloborate to create music without needing to be in the same location. The forums provide the basis for communication where music projects may be initiated and managed. MODEM provides tools for the uploading of original tracks and mixes.
Target Group:
The portal is aimed at students of music schools in Europe. Currently, members are about 40 and in the last 12 months they have shared a dozen music tracks.
Technology:
MAIN PORTAL: CChost (PHP SQL, LAMP)
TOOLS:
- Multimedia Sharing and collaboration: CChost (PHP SQL, LAMP)
Usability and Accessibility:
The MODEM portal combines several of the features that we have reviewed in this report into one well-organized, feature-rich multilingual website (English, French, Italian and Spanish) for cross-border collaborative music creation and sharing of good practices. It is very apparent that MODEM is built upon years of experience in community building gained through prior similar projects, and the main beneficiary of this experience is the user who is offered an integrated solution for digital music collaboration in pair with more commercial products, but without the bias and economic barriers of such solutions. The creative part is featuring an online sequencer made in Flash with a very intuitive user interface and a comprehensive user guide found in the help pages. Besides enabling the user to have a fully-integrated experience (i.e. not having to leave the portal for offline recording), the online sequencer also carries the idioms of digital audio workstations and can therefore also be assessed as a pedagogical introduction to the world of digital music production. The collaborating page is also fully integrated into the portal, letting users upload files, comment on them, and participate to projects initiated by other users.
Access to the creative, collaborative, and informative features of the website is done through a horizontal navigation bar which is accessible everywhere on the portal. The navigation on the portal is fluid and easily interpreted by the user. Vertical navigation on the left side of the website links to background information and descriptive sections of the project. The registration procedure to MODEM is following standardized of user registration concepts and should by no means refrain users from using the features of the portal.
