Gina Fant-Saez has taught me much about the wonders of Pro Tools, so I know first-hand that imagination is what drives her throughout her career. I first met her during a phone conversation back in 1999, when I was looking for a Pro Tools operator for a project in the Austin neighborhood, and she was in New Orleans working on a Soul Asylum album. In less than an hour, she managed to convince me to abandon my old analog prejudices, invest in a Pro Tools rig of my own and to hire her as my operator. She simultaneously edited drums, taught me the ins and outs of the software she was using and kept her sense of humor about the 16-hour sessions we were doing. By the time we finished, I felt like I'd known her all my life. Since then, Fant-Saez has been more than generous with her time, making herself available for tech questions — even in the oddest hours of the night — while also helping many others like me embrace the new technologies that shape our industry.

With a master's degree in Interactive Telecommunications from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, Fant-Saez left New York and the jingle industry in 1997 and relocated her recording studio, Blue World Music, to Austin. In the ensuing years, she has worked on projects in various capacities, from engineering to mixing, for numerous successful artists, including U2, Jimmie Vaughan, Sting, Shawn Colvin and Chris Vrenna (Nine Inch Nails, Tweaker).

In her latest incarnation as muse of all things digital, Fant-Saez has created an online music collaboration network called eSession.com. It promises to be a multifaceted music file-sharing device for high-profile writers, producers, musicians, engineers and mixers who want to increase their visibility and accessibility via the Internet. While she visited with me at my home recently, updating my Pro Tools rig with the latest HD hardware and software, I had an opportunity to ask her in some detail how eSession.com will work.

The Rocket Network was an early experiment in online music sharing that failed. What makes you think that you will succeed?

Willy Henshall started [Rocket Network], and while the concept was great, all it did at the time was MIDI collaboration across the Internet. Back then, it was called Res Rocket and you were running on 2,400-baud modems, which is one one-hundredth the speed we have now. The limitations were that [Emagic] Logic, now owned by Apple, could only work with Logic, [Steinberg] Cubase could only work with Cubase, and [Digidesign] Pro Tools could only work with Pro Tools. Those were the only applications that had Rocket built in. Also, they charged for bandwidth! And who can keep track of how much bandwidth they're using?

So I'd meet somebody on Rocket, and say, “Hey, you want to play guitar on my song?” And there were times I'd get some 1970s doodle all over my vocal tracks, which I had to pay to download. I kept telling them for years, “You've got to combine talent with the technology! You're giving people technology, but you're not giving them any talent to use!”

So based on my experience with Rocket, and based on experience using my private FTP server, which I worked on with other writers and musicians for many years, I started creating eSession.com. I asked myself, “Why don't more people work this way?” The answer was, they don't have a huge resource of talent, and file transfer is too complicated for most people. So then I asked myself, “What does everybody use?” Everybody uses the Internet. “What does everybody use on the Internet?” A browser! So, I designed eSession.com to be a Web-based, cross-platform collaboration system with a database of world-class talent, providing a simple drag-and-drop solution for file transfer so that anybody using Cubase, Nuendo, Logic, Digital Performer, Live or Pro Tools will be able to use it in one cohesive working space. It's a global network of talent.

Many contemporary artists are releasing albums made using multiple producers and engineers, relying on the final mix engineer or even the mastering engineer to pull the final product together into a cohesive whole. Now you're offering a means to employ a different engineer for each track! How will any quality control be maintained in a production that relies exclusively on eSession?

Perhaps what I'm doing is giving people an opportunity to change engineers in the middle of a project, if they want to. But I still think it's up to the producer to say, “Hey, [this guy's] mixing this album and here are the 10 songs.” If something changes or if they don't like the mixes, then they can log on to eSession.com to [find] a different engineer. Maybe they hire a pro to come in and fix something. It's just another tool. It's totally not my intention to take any cohesion out of the music business!

But just as there are minimum requirements for a PC to function, shouldn't there be minimum requirements for a good recording or performance?

Well, from the talent side, our database comprises professionals who have spent their careers dealing with clients. For quality-control purposes, my partner, Kevin Killen, and I have been going around to our various talent members' studios and looking at their gear, helping them to get the cleanest sound possible. Kevin usually tends to their mic placement, mic pre's and outboard gear, while I take on their computers. We're a great tag team. We're slowly making sure our talent members have all they need to create great-sounding work for our clients.

On the client side, I think there are going to be professionals who know how to use a mic pre and get good sounds, and there are going to be those that have no idea how to mike or record their instruments at all. However, when a client contacts you for the first time [on eSession], the client is required to complete a negotiation form along with the submission of their material. These negotiation forms ask, “Your project was recorded on what, using what software? Is it recorded in a home studio or in a commercial studio? What's your bit rate, sample rate, et cetera.” So an engineer or musician can get a good idea before they even accept a job how professional the client is. Just as one can look at a musician's profile in eSession.com and [find] their studio, mic preamps and all their instruments, the same holds true for clients.

Let's say you're hiring a bass player for an overdub. Is there a way to audition the sound before paying for a performance?

Absolutely. You'll have a real-time plug-in. It's an RTAS plug-in for Pro Tools and a VST plug-in for Cubase and Nuendo. We also have an Audio Units plug-in for programs like Logic. It's an approximation of the glass in the studio — a plug-in you can turn on in Pro Tools that's an audio/video window. So in one window you see yourself, and in the other window you'll see the person you're working with. You can listen to their performance while they're playing in real time and produce the performance remotely. Right now, the plug-in is using MP3 compression. It's 256k, so you wouldn't really use it to record, but we do have a lossless version because 50-megabit Internet has just come into New York and L.A. Right now, we're forced to use compressed audio in this plug-in due to slow Internet speeds — most people are only getting about 1.5 [megabit] at most. But in the next year or two, we're going to be able to do complete lossless recording, so we'll be able to use this plug-in for real-time recording as opposed to just pre-production.

I've worked on projects where even a single copy of a mix is not allowed to leave the studio. With eSession.com, all of the album's files will be out there. How will eSession address security concerns for un-copyrighted material?

Well, eSession has two forms of encryption, and every song is only accessible and downloadable by the owner of the project; it's all permission-based. So we're creating the site to be ironclad as far as anyone stealing someone else's material is concerned. But, as you know, there are hard drives floating around all the time and FTP sites with files accessible to anyone with a log-in and password. Each individual song on our site will have its own set of permissions — who gets in and who can upload or download. Currently, we're in discussion with ASCAP about a possible partnership, which would inevitably help eSession address copyright issues.

How will eSession clients arrive at pricing for their work?

Everything is negotiable. When the client pays $25 to contact a talent member, he or she receives a negotiation form [called a Work Request]. If it's going to a musician, it asks how many tracks the client wants, what he expects, what he's looking for, et cetera. The client then replies with what he or she wants. So before the talent member even makes a bid, they get to see what the client is looking for. The talent assesses all this and, again, gets to see how professional the client is, and then comes back to that same negotiation form, saying, “I'm going to bill you a flat rate or an hourly rate or a daily rate,” or whatever. That goes back to the client, and the client may say, “I only have ‘x’ dollars.” They can renegotiate as much as they want.

We're not setting fees because, as you know, a friend might call and say, “Can you do this for me? I only have $500,” and, if you're not busy, you'll do it. We're starting to see some copycat sites instituting $300 fees. One site suggested starting at $250. We feel that musicians devalue themselves by subjecting themselves to fixed rates. Projects vary in time, size, complexity and range of use — i.e., a demo or final master; rates should be variable, as well.

How does eSession get paid?

We take 15 percent of whatever the talent charges. Also, every time somebody contacts you to mix something, they pay $25. Ten dollars of that goes to the talent [and $15 goes to us]. We're hoping that it might be [worth] $1,000 a month or $12,000 a year, just for the talent to assess whom they want to work with! Imagine if you had $1 for every time someone asked you to listen to something — well, now you have $10.

Tell me about this new facet of eSession.com that's called eSessionwriters.com.

eSessionwriters.com is a subscription-based service for accomplished songwriters and composers. For eSession.com, we will require everyone to have at least 15 major-label credits to be part of the database. The eSessionwriter.com database will comprise writers with similar criteria, such as five Top 10 hits or two major film credits. We haven't worked out the details for membership yet, but the site is going to allow songwriters and composers, regardless of location, to collaborate. They can scroll through the database of successful writers and find others to co-write with across the Internet. We've created a virtual writing space, where they'll have free access to our chart application, which is an application to create fast and easy chord charts.

What is eSessionIndie.com and eSessionLite.com?

eSessionIndie.com will be for players who may not have the 15 major-label credits required to be part of eSession.com, but who have the talent and experience working on various indie-label projects. So clients on a tighter budget can perhaps hire guys for less than they might be on eSession.com. eSessionLite would be for the amateur market. Anybody will be able sign up, and it will be subscription-based.

Do you see any danger of your site becoming overburdened with too many choices?

Hopefully not. At some point, we may have to close the sign-up. I don't want to overwhelm people with 300 guitar players. But right now it's okay. We have about 280 people as of today, and we get about 10 sign-ups a week. By the time this article comes out, we should have around 350 musicians and engineers. Eventually, we'll be adding a producer database, as well.