RiffLink

From Guide

How to Join RiffWorld.com and Collaborate Online using RiffLink built into RiffWorks T4 (free) & RiffWorks Standard ($129). This guide assumes you know how to use RiffWorks to record your own songs. RiffLink online collaboration service is included for free with RiffWorks for a limited time.

Contents 1 STEP 1: Create & Edit Your RiffWorld Profile 2 STEP 2: Post Your Songs to RiffWorld Using RiffCast 3 STEP 3: How to Use RiffWorks' Built-in RiffLink Online Music Collaboration 3.1 What You Should Know Before You Start 3.2 JOIN a Collaboration - Recommended for Beginners 3.3 CREATE a New Collaboration - Not recommended for beginners 3.3.1 Start Recording From Scratch in A New Collaboration on RiffLink 3.3.2 Import a Song or individual Riffs from Your Computer to RiffLink 4 Creator Membership

STEP 1: Create & Edit Your RiffWorld Profile

1. Keep this guide page open for reference.
2. Open a new browser window and go to RiffWorld.com.
3. Login to RiffWorld.com by clicking "Login or Join" on RiffWorld.com. If you already have a SonomaKey (username) from the store, RiffWorks, or the forums, then use the same one. Do not create more than one.
4. Click on "View my profile" below your user name on the left.
5. Edit your Musician Profile. Example of a complete profile here.)
   1. Upload an avatar (small and square). Format can be gif, jpg or png.
   2. Upload a picture (of you or your guitar, etc). Format can be gif, jpg or png and best not to exceed 500px wide or tall.
   3. Enter your musical influences and the kind of gear you use. For best results: Enter influences and gear exactly as the artist/band/manufacturer/company spells, capitalizes, and words them. RiffWorld Gear List Example in the Forum & RiffWorld Influences List Example in the Forum. Or use wikipedia or Google to quickly find the correct spellings and wordings of bands and products. Include the company name before the product. Do not include dashes, asterix, or extra characters. Include a return after each one. This will ensure that your profile will be linked to other people's profiles with similar interests. This makes it easy to find people with similar interests.
   4. The RiffWorld Creator Membership Icon in your profile allows you to access all the online collaboration features (eg. JOIN and CREATE both PUBLIC and INVITE-ONLY collaborations). The Creator Membership for online collaboration is an add-on feature for RiffWorks, that we currently give to you automatically and for FREE. Pricing subject to change.

STEP 2: Post Your Songs to RiffWorld Using RiffCast

1. Edit your RiffWorld Musician Profile before your first RiffCast (see steps above) or your songs may be assigned to Admin instead of you. Contact Support if you have difficulty.
2. Record a song with RiffWorks. Download RiffWorks T4 for free, or buy RiffWorks Standard for the most features. Learn to use RiffWorks from the 32-Step Quick Start tutorial that begins when you launch it and from the RiffWorks Online Guide.
3. When you have a song you'd like to post, upload songs you've created with RiffWorks to RiffWorld.com using the RIFFCAST button in RiffWorks. This will bring up the RiffCaster submission form. Complete the form paying particular attention to the sections below:
   1. Title: Use only alphanumeric characters (A-Z and 0-9) No brackets, excessive punctuation, accents, umlauts or offensive language.
   2. Description: For best results, keep your description under 20 words without excessive punctuation. You can edit it from your RiffWorld profile later to add a longer description, lyrics, etc.
   3. Genre: Add words that describe the song so it shows up in searches generated by the RiffCaster Genre Tags. Use lower case letters only with no punctuation, slashes or dashes. Separate each word using a space. You can always edit these later in your RiffWorld profile. Please do not include your name/username in the genre field. Example Genres: rock blues pop metal collaboration and more.
   4. Station: Choose a Station to post your song (RiffCaster or RiffRumble song competition if one is accepting submissions).
   5. Performers: Give credit to yourself if it is a solo effort, and the people who contributed to the song if it is a collaboration (input their usernames).
4. Clicking RiffCast uploads your song to RiffWorld.
5. Your song will appear on Recent RiffCasts, your Musician Profile, and in the genre lists you specified when you filled out the form.
6. There will be an OGG and an MP3 download link under the song player on RiffWorld.com.
7. Share your music - Click your song's name on RiffWorld, get the "Embed Code" from that page and paste it into your web page, MySpace page, even paste your song as a MySpace comment.
8. Your song will receive comments from the RiffWorks community and the public. Leave comments on others songs too! You can delete comments that your song receives by logging into RiffWorld and going to your comments.
9. Subscribe to a Podcast of your songs, other's songs, or a specific Genre. Click on the orange "Get Podcast" button at the top of a list of RiffCasts. This will work for most current browsers. If your browser is not set up to work with Podcast links, just right-click on the link, select copy link, and paste it into iTunes/Advanced/Subscribe to Podcast.

Tips:

• You can also post songs using the upload form in your user profile on RiffWorld.com.
• For RiffRumble song contests, you can only enter a song using the RiffWorks interface.

STEP 3: How to Use RiffWorks' Built-in RiffLink Online Music Collaboration

What You Should Know Before You Start

• Make sure you are comfortable using RiffWorks to record your own songs by taking the 32-Step Quick Start tutorial that begins when you launch RiffWorks (14 languages available), or by reading the RiffWorks Online Guide.
• Listen to 'RiffCasted collaborations on RiffWorld.com to hear how finished collaborations sound.
• It can take quite a while to load a RiffLink collaboration in RiffWorks, so please be patient and allow 5 - 30 minutes for it to load depending on the size of the song. Reloading it will just take longer.
• Use only alphanumeric characters (A through Z and 1 through 9) in the RiffLink Title and Description fields. You may use parenthesis, periods and commas sparingly in the Description. Please no brackets, umlauts, accents, slashes, dashes, multiple exclaimation points, and so on. If you use non-alphanumeric characters, it could cause RiffLink to go down temporarily. We are working on fixing this issue More in Forum Post.
• You can either A.) JOIN a Public Collaboration most likely created by a seasoned collaborator or B.) CREATE a New Collaboration after you've learned the ropes.

JOIN a Collaboration - Recommended for Beginners

1. Launch RiffWorks and click the RIFFLINK button in RiffWorks' RIFF RECORDER panel.
2. Login with your SonomaKey – the same user name and password you used when you bought RiffWorks and logged into RiffWorld.com.
3. Browse the list of Collaborations using the VIEW popup menu. You'll find the same lists of collaborations on the RiffWorld and within RiffWorks:
   1. Public Collaborations: Lists all publicly available collaborations.
   2. My Collaborations: Lists only the collaborations you've created in your RiffWorld.com profile and within RiffWorks.
   3. My Work in Progress: Lists the collaborations you have contributed to in your RiffWorld.com profile and within RiffWorks.
   4. Active Collaborations: Lists collaborations with people currently logged in, so you can use RiffWorks to listen to what's being created and jam live using RiffWorks.
   5. My Invites: Lists 'Public' and 'Invite Only' collaborations to which you have been invited.
4. Select a Collaboration to join by clicking the JOIN button.
5. Clicking JOIN begins to load the collaboration in RiffWorks. This could take 5 - 30 minutes depending on the size of the song, so please be patient and grab a beverage while loading. Clicking JOIN again will just add more time to the process.
6. Once loaded, you will be then be able to play the collaboration, record riffs, edit, save and Mix down the Riffs and song the same as you do with regular RiffWorks songs. Changes you make to the song will appear to the other active contributors in near real-time.
7. Collaborations are automatically saved on the RiffWorld.com server as you record. If the internet connection is compromised before the server has a chance to save, it is possible that you may loose your work.
8. Only the user who created a Riff can record the first Layer in that Riff.
9. Delete Layers: You can only delete the Layers and Riffs that you create.
10. Chat: Once you've joined a Collaboration, chat with others in RiffWorks' RIFFLINK screen or within the collaboration on RiffWorld. All chats in public and invite-only collaborations are viewable by the public, so please do not use offensive language or discuss things you wish to keep private.
11. Add-on InstantDrummer sessions can be used, and will be heard by you and other collaborators as they stream from the RiffWorld.com server as needed. However, InstantDrummer sessions will load fastest if you own them because there is no need to wait for them to stream fom the server. Any additions you make to the song using the Rex Player and ReWire backups will not be audible to other collaboration participants.
12. The InstantDrummer sessions listed on the RiffCaster song pages (bottom right hand-side) are the sessions used to create that song.
13. On RiffWorld.com, you will notice JOIN/JOINED buttons on the collaborations. If you have already contributed, the button should say JOINED. If you click the JOIN button, the collab will be automatically added to the "My Work in Progess" list inside RiffWorks. Collaborate inside RiffWorks using the instructions below.
14. The songs posted in the list of public collaborations that have no contributors listed (active: none, contributors: none) are empty collaborations. The creator hasn't recorded anything yet, so they should either record something or delete their empty collaboration.
15. The RiffWorks Community created RiffLink etiquette guidelines, like "Give credit to people who contributed to the song if it is a collaboration". Please read about this and more RiffLink Etiquette.

CREATE a New Collaboration - Not recommended for beginners

When you are ready to CREATE a collaboration, you can either start recording from scratch in your new collaboration in RiffWorks OR import something you previously recorded in RiffWorks into that collaboration:

Start Recording From Scratch in A New Collaboration on RiffLink

1. Click the CREATE button in the RiffWorks' RiffLink Tab to start a new collaboration. Or create a new collaboration by going to your profile on RiffWorld.com and clicking "Link your First Riff".
   1. Title: Use only alphanumeric characters (A-Z and 0-9) No brackets, excessive punctuation, accents, umlauts or offensive language.
   2. Description: For best results, keep your description under 20 words without excessive punctuation. You can edit it from your RiffWorld profile later to add a longer description, lyrics, etc. Use the description to ask for a particular type of musician.
2. Create 'Public' or 'Invite Only' collaborations. A 'Public' collaboration can be viewed and edited by any RiffWorks user, whereas an 'Invite Only' collaboration can only be viewed and edited by you and other RiffWorks users to whom you give access. Invite users to 'Public' and 'Invite Only' collaborations by adding their user name (case sensitive and enter a return after each user name) to the invite list. You also need to invite yourself. The invitations show up inside RiffWorks in the "My Invites" list. The only way you are currently notified that you have been invited to a collaboration is by viewing this menu - more notification systems are coming soon. Do not use the invite field to type anything other than user names. If you would like to request a certain type of musician, please use the description field.
3. You will be then be able to record riffs, edit, save and Mix down the Riffs and song the same as you do with regular RiffWorks songs. Changes you make to the song will appear to the other active contributors in near real-time.
4. When you're ready to RiffCast your collaboration, please include the word collaboration in the genre tag field so it shows up in that list.

Import a Song or individual Riffs from Your Computer to RiffLink

1. Log into RiffLink from RiffWorks
2. Create a New Collaboration (see steps above)
3. Join your Collaboration
4. In RiffWorks, Click the IMPORT button in the RIFFS panel.
5. If you already have a song recorded and saved on your computer, select any .rwr (riff) or .rws (song) file to open to import the riff or riffs into the collaboration.
6. Your Riffs will be uploaded to the RiffLink server.
7. There's no need to press save in RiffLink as it saves automatically to the RiffLink server.
8. You will have to put the song back together in the songbar as it will not import the arrangement.
9. You will be then be able to record riffs, edit, save and Mix down the Riffs and song the same as you do with regular RiffWorks songs. Changes you make to the song will appear to the other active contributors in near real-time.
10. When you're ready to RiffCast your collaboration, please include the word collaboration in the genre tag field so it shows up in that list. Also please include the usernames of the people who collaborated on the song with you.

Creator Membership

The Creator Membership for online collaboration is an add-on feature for RiffWorks that we currently give to all RiffWorks users automatically and for FREE. This means all RiffWorks users can CREATE and JOIN both PUBLIC and INVITE-ONLY collaborations. Pricing subject to change.

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