Virtual Collaboration

From “Master Class,” by Sasha Frere-Jones, New Yorker (April 6, 2009):

In August of 2008, the twenty-seven-year-old Israeli musician Ophir Kutiel (known as Kutiman) was browsing YouTube for instructional clips, looking for, he says, “new licks, you know, something for piano or guitar or drums”—all instruments that he plays. He found a tutorial video from the legendary funk drummer Bernard (Pretty) Purdie, whom he had never heard of. Kutiman downloaded the clip and began to play with it using a software package called Vegas Pro. Out of the clips uploaded to YouTube by other musicians, Kutiman stitched together more than a hundred performances, created an album, and uploaded the entire project to thru-you.com, where each song has embedded links to the sampled musicians.