Songwriting and Collaboration: Part 1 - Being in a Band vs Being a Solo Musician
Thursday is quickly becoming my favourite day of the week! This week, a brand new series which was requested by a facebook friend - but the topic is definitely exploding in the steemit music community, too. Here are my thoughts on collaborating when writing music. Enjoy!
Video Transcript:
Hello! I am the artist known as DEROSNEC, and welcome to my weekly vlog where I talk about making music, art, movies, and more.
Regardless of if you’re a solo artist or in a band, there will inevitably be a time when you’re going to want to, or even need to, collaborate with others in your songwriting. It might be another instrumentalist, vocalist, producer - maybe even a poet or a composer. Today I want to talk about the benefits of collaborating when writing music, and talk about being in a band.
Should You Join a Band?
I’ll just come right out and say it, yes you should join a band (or ensemble depending on your genre) if you’re a musician who’s looking to write and perform. Even if you want to do your own solo project, you should do it. No one ever said that you can’t do both!
There are a couple of reasons why I believe this:
1) Practicality
No human is an island, and while I know some incredible solo artists who do manage to succeed all by themselves, take it from someone who does everything herself, it’s a helluva lot of work. It takes a lot of time, money, and creative energy to write, record, mix, master, print, market, design, practice, produce a live show, land a gig, design more, market more, update social media, design even more, market even more, practice again, perform, produce videos... did I mention market? Oh, and of course make a living and a have a private life somewhere in there, too.
Okay so if that didn’t exhaust you, then you’ll probably be fine. But if it did, then that alone should be enough of a reason to consider collaborating. All that work can be delegated amongst members ahead of time, saving everyone a lot of headache, sanity, and even money.
2) Creative Growth
Working creatively with others expands your repertoire. Out of all the bands and groups that I’ve joined over the years I think I learned the most from the ones that did completely different music from what I generally write, and it’s influenced my music and inspirations in, what I think at least, are beneficial ways. I write angsty electro-pop-industrial, but I have been a part of classical choirs, showtune groups, pop groups, metal groups, and some other genres, too.
To be fair, I have a very broad taste in music so it’s easy for me to mix it up. In fact, I really like to try new styles. But even if you’re a die-hard metalhead who can’t stand pop it’s worth trying to write at least one pop song in your life just to challenge yourself, even if only to reaffirm your detest. I bet you’d be surprised at what you can take back with you from genre to genre to create something really fresh.
3) Objective Feedback
Nothing ever happens in a vacuum, and it’s easy to get stuck when you’re too close to something. Things like Writer’s Block and repetition are best destroyed by taking your mind to something completely different, and having an objective ear to bounce ideas off of is a fast and fun way to do it.
This can even apply to any of your solo work, outside of a band context - share a work in progress with a few trusted friends or collaborators and get some feedback. Different people interpret things differently, so if you’re trying to tell a story or give a specific message to others through your music or art, then you’ll have to run it by a few people before calling it “done” to make sure it’s actually saying what you want it to say.
Have you ever been in a creative collaborative relationship like a band? What did you get out of it? What’s your advice to people who haven’t tried it yet? Let me know in a comment below!
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Enjoyed your vlog. Although I'm not a musician of any kind, one of the things I take away from what you are saying is that working together with others 1) will validate your work 2) gives the ability to concentrate better on what you are good at 3) increases experiences. I think they are all true, for many professions, from artists to marketeers to problem solvers of any kind. Collaboration gives the opportunity to create together, the learn from the feedback, to actually become better. And it can also bring a lot of fun!
Totally! I'm a bit of a jill-of-all-trades and while I aim this particular series at musicians, I hope to try and give useful advice that applies to any craft. I'm glad that that came through for you - thanks so much for stopping by, watching, and commenting!
True. Am looking forward to the read the rest of your series soon :)
I second everything you said but I feel it's not always easy to actually find a band especially if your not that advanced in your practise yet. Apart from those bands that form in High school or college, later on in life it isn't easy to find a band that has the same objectives as you, the same amount of time or lack thereof, the same goals and so on. Or maybe that's just me, as I don't know a lot of other musos
What you say is definitely true - it can be harder to put something together as an adult than as a kid. But it's definitely not impossible, and the first step is actually looking and putting yourself out there. You will get guaranteed nothing if you do nothing! :)
Hey Nina,
My wife's cousin is in the music business and he has echoed the same as you with regards to collaboration with his "large band". His core people have been with him for about 40 years and he can't praise them enough when we talk about his music.
Young aspiring artists in the music world should heed your advice.
Until next time,
@sultnpapper
Thanks so much!
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Thanks!
I'm a solo artist, nice post :)
Excellent! Thanks for stopping by - I hope you find my vlog series useful :D
Snoop dogg : Money is the Power, Power is The money ....
:) you know this rule, there are no other way which is not related to money, even if the band or artist had no money, he must find a sponsor with huge money... and that's it :)
thanks for the vlog, in my opinion, if someone can do his songs alone he can do them alone, if he/she want to be in a band and work with a team and love to be a group instead of being alone then story is different, because we're all know that Even MJ was singing alone while he was on stage and sometimes he bring some musicians to play behind him, and also there are some musicians who sing alone and they are ok. but all of these are depends on the person, and he choose it and I won't say that someone most be a solo artist or in a band, it's all depend on him/her :)
peace my friend :)
snoop is definitely speaking the truth when money is power! But In my experience anyway I have managed to find musicians to play for barter or even for free because we're all ultimately in it for the music. So it's not impossible.
And I hope I didn't sound disparaging on people who choose to go at it alone, because that was not my intention. But even MJ didn't do everything alone - He had a huge team behind him doing things! I highgly recommend watching his last documentary and you'll see what I mean. He was the director and the main creative force, yes, but he's always had a band behind him (Jackson 5 at the earliest!)
Exactly, I've seen MJ's "This is it concert" and I saw that he was asking musicians to play each part, he was playing some notes with his vocal and asking the electric guitar player to play it, it's all working and all are true, but you know without money, no band or solo artist can move on. we are all love to do our music and share it around with people, but even that sharing ( need advertisement which needs money) so we can't do it free. we can only be free and make no money from it only when we have a side job or maybe if we can live in the nature :))). I mean if we don't need a house or paying taxes or buying food and paying for energy ...
I've managed to get quite far with bartering - I agree completely with you, nothing is "Free" (nor should it be really!), but you can offset quite a bit of hard costs by collaborating with others and each doing something that goes towards the work.
MJ started out with the Jackson 5 - which was a band! So he had a solid foundation in working with others and collaborating with his brothers and father to create a music empire. He didn't do it alone at first :)