Collaborative music creation

A system for collaborative handling of music contributions over a network, the system comprising:

• a portal, the portal being accessible over the network by a plurality of user workstations and comprising:
• a collaboration unit, operable to:
• receive a plurality of music contributions, at least one of the music contributions comprising a set of music elements;
• and
• receive and interpret a plurality of collaboration requests, at least a first of the plurality of collaboration requests being received over the network from a first user workstation, and at least a second of the plurality of collaboration requests being received over the network from a second user workstation;
• an editing unit, operable to provide a set of editing capabilities for editing music elements based at least in part on the plurality of collaboration requests such that the editing capabilities relate to user interaction comprising both signal level edits and score representation edits;
• an output generation unit, operable to generate output data based at least in part on the music contribution and the plurality of collaboration requests;
• and
• a network interface unit, operable to facilitation communications via the network between the workstations and the portal;
• wherein the portal further includes a deconstruction unit that determines music micro-elements of the music contribution and determines music macro-elements of the music contribution based on the determined music micro-elements such that the deconstructed music contribution is used by the output generation unit to generate the output data.

A computer-readable storage medium having a computer-readable program embodied therein for directing operation of a portal for collaborative handling of music contributions over a network including a collaboration unit, the collaboration unit including an editing unit, an output generation unit, and a network interface unit, the computer-readable program including computer executable instructions for collaborative handling of a music contribution in accordance with the following:

• receiving the music contribution at the portal, the music contribution comprising a set of music elements and the portal being accessible over the network;
• receiving a plurality of collaboration requests over the network from a plurality of workstations,
• wherein at least a first portion of the plurality of collaboration requests is from a first of the plurality of workstations, and at least a second portion of the plurality of collaboration requests is from a second of the plurality of workstations;
• editing the music contribution such that the editing relates to user interaction comprising both signal level edits and score representation edits;
• and
• generating music output at the portal relating to at least a portion of the music contribution and in response to at least one of the collaboration requests;
• wherein the computer executable instructions for collaborative handling of a music contribution are further in accordance with deconstructing the music contribution by determining music micro-elements and determining music macro-elements based on the determined music micro-elements such that the deconstructed music contribution is used in generating the music output.