Guest Author: Brian Casel is a music producer and web designer.  He writes at Serve The Song, a blog about song craft, music production, and online music promotion.  Follow him on Twitter @CasJam.

Great bands rely on a single key ingredient to produce great music: Collaboration.  While it may seem like an obvious answer, a truly successful collaboration in music can be hard to come by.  But when that golden musical partnership exists, your band is destined for great things. Indaba Music is the perfect medium to exercise your skills as a collaborating musician.  After all, the essence of Indaba Music revolves around collaboration!  But what does it mean to be an effective collaborator in songwriting? It's all about the "give and take".  You're giving your unique style, your musical skill set, and your personality to the project.  You're taking the different but equally unique set of skills, styles and personality from your co-writers or bandmates.  Together, you're producing music that finds a creative sweet spot that none of you could have achieved on your own.

Here are eight tips for successful collaboration with your bandmates:

1) Know your personal strengths and weaknesses

Nobody is great at everything.  We all excel in specific areas of our craft - whether its soloing, constructing chord progressions, lyric writing, formulating beats, audio production, or something else.  Know which things you bring to the table.  Be even more aware of the things that you look to your co-writers to fill in the gaps.

2) Show up empty handed

That's right, don't prepare your material before entering a jam session or writing session.  Come up with musical ideas during your session by drawing on the creative energy between you and your co-writers.  Allow yourself to be influenced by what the others are doing.  Craft your chords, riffs, lyrics, and rhythms as a response to what you're hearing from your bandmates.

3) Make your bandmates better

In sports, they say the Most Valuable Player is one who makes his teammates perform better.  The same principal applies to playing in a band.  Always play your best, and encourage your bandmates to do the same.  Verbal encouragement is always good, but it's even more effective to communicate through the music.  Play and adjust your musical part in response to what your bandmates are playing.  Which brings us to...

4) Listen, Listen, Listen

Never stop Listening.  You want to take in even more than you put out.  Hear, digest, and process everything that's going on in the room.  The physicality of playing your instrument should become second nature.  Develop the ability to focus on what others are doing while you play your instrument.  Throughout the session, remain focused on what you hear coming from your bandmates, not on what your hear coming from you.

The importance of listening isn’t only true for rehearsals, writing, and recording sessions.  It’s a key element of live performance, where listening to your bandmates is essential to putting on a great live show.  Not only on-stage, but back stage as well.  Read more about preparing your live set here.

5) Find inspiration through collaboration

As you listen to what your bandmates are doing, let their creativity spark your own.  Just as you get inspired when you listen to your favorite records, find your inspiration in-session and apply it in real-time as you create music together with your bandmates.  This road will lead you to a final product that is truly original.

6) Work together non-music duties for your band

As we all know, a lot more work goes into playing in a band than just "playing".  Split the promotional duties evenly and fairly with your bandmates.  If one of you is a graphic designer, that person should be in charge of band artwork and design (logo, posters, album art, etc.).  If someone else has strong communication skills, they should be in charge of securing gigs, or managing your band's email list.  Maybe one of you is interested in all web-related things.  That person can be in charge of promoting your band's web presence through Twitter.

7) Be flexible and fair

This should be obvious, but too often overlooked.  Be flexible and fair when it comes to the logistics of a working band.  If you rehearse in several places, offer to travel to your bandmates place for rehearsal half the time.  If you pay for a rehearsal space, split the cost evenly.  Offer to drive to the gig half the time.  You get the idea.

8) Nurture your friendship

Keeping the relationships with your bandmates in a healthy place is vital to the success of your band.  Be cool and respectful with your bandmates, just as you would with members of your family.  You share a different kind of bond with your bandmates than you do with other friends.  A solid friendship will go a long way towards producing great music as a band.

Being in a band is a lot more than just showing up and playing the gig.  It's more than practicing and drilling through your songs.  You have to practice the art of creative collaboration.