How To Be Creative With Your Songwriting Without Breaking Up The Band

Do famous bands really write a lot of their songs as a group? We sometimes will see everyone in the band listed as co-writers, but is this really how the songs were written? It almost sounds too good to be true, everyone getting along, and tuning into the same creative vibe to create music together.

However, songwriting with a whole band is actually not very common at all. It more often the case that one or two members do the writing, and some marginal contributions of the others enable them to share in the credit.

The usual scenario with band writing is that all the members are there to help arrange a song that only one or two members actually wrote. This can be a very inefficient use of practice time.

So what can be done to insure that all members with a songwriting passion get to share in creating the new songs?

The most common SOLUTION is for band members to write solo, or pair-up for writing in twos, or threes at the most. This way, you can EASILY switch around writing partners, and everyone will be bringing COMPLETED SONGS to rehearsal so that no time will be wasted.

It is ALWAYS a good idea to give the other band members a recording of the song to learn a head of time. There is nothing more tedious than having to teach band members every part of a song in a group setting, when they could have easily come prepared.

You can always add band members as co-writers if their input to the arranging process ends up significantly changing the song. But I wouldn’t put them down as writers just because they put some standard drum beats or bass lines to a completed song.

TWO THINGS THAT WILL MAKE BAND WRITING A BREEZE

One, co-writing is a little like romance; sometimes it clicks, and other times it doesn’t. Don’t try to force it. Just let partnerships that work well supply the band with new songs, and for ones that don’t, just let it go and write solo or find another partner. Egos, jealousy, negative emotions, bickering, and talking behind each others backs, have no place in a professional band.

Two, realize that some players won’t have a knack for writing at all, and that is ok.

Additionally, if drummers or bass players begin playing guitar or piano and singing, so that they might contribute more effectively as writers, that is great. This is a common scenario in creative music groups. Even though they might be hacks on the new instruments, their musical ideas could be awesome. Helping them with the performance of their ideas could then quickly add some new writers to the group.

This is how most band writing works. When I realized this it COMPLETELY DE-MYSTIFIED band songwriting for me, and eliminated the struggle AND ENDLESS SEARCH of trying to find the Ultimate Writing Team in a band.

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