Collaborative music project ?

You’re probably right, but how awesome would it be if you were wrong? 🤗

Sign me up as lyricist.

I would love to participate if it will actually happened.

One thing I'll absolutely insist on, though - 

NO MONEY 
Strictly a free release. 

Let me explain what one of the big hurdles is with doing a project like this: apart from all the peccadillos of dealing with other musicians, you have to find someone who can play an instrument to a high standard, thinks along the same lines as you do ........

..... and knows how to use a DAW. More specifically, the DAW you're using. And can use it well. 

Musicians tend to record using a bewildering variety of equipment, so you'll get someone with the latest version of Cubase on one hand, and someone else with an old Portastudio on the other. With everything inbetween. 

With this in mind, working collaboratively, you have to insist on everyone using one DAW, in my case, the latest version of Reaper. DAW's are not always easy to set up or use, and you really need a lot of experience to get the best out of them. 

For example, if I said "Here's the keyboard part, 4/4, 104 bpm, project file is <here> - download it, bass comes in at bar 120, finishes bar 156, record the bass track from that point and send the individual bass part back, no other tracks, with no effects in WAV format.... " most musicians are going to go eh ? 

There isn't time to give someone a tutorial, either they can do it or they can't. 

Invariably, you get a bass part coming back which has been very badly recorded and distorts to hell and back. 

So there's another hurdle to get over. You can have the best musicians in the world, but if they're technically incompetent, nothing goes anywhere. You can't learn how to use a DAW overnight, it takes a long, long time to get the best out of one. 

You have to have one person used to producing music who's highly skilled in DAW use who oversees everything. 

Count me in as a keyboardist or vocalist 

Necrotica wrote: Count me in as a keyboardist or vocalist

Thank God for that, no one wants to hear me sing. ;-)

I'll try and put a lead guitar on that chord sequence (no promises though!!)

Davesax1965 wrote: JD wrote: So, as PA Collaborators official (or non-existent) lyricist and evil genius behind the camera, I'm proposing a concept album of sorts. Working title - The Beasts Bite Back Overview of concept - Betrayals and Misjudgements JD, I hate to break it to you gently, but I don't think any album in the history of prog rock has been written by a lyricist. ;-)  I don't do lyrics and I really don't do vocals. For a laugh once, I put up an advert on a vocalist forum asking for a lyricist to help put lyrics to an existing song. All I got back was rubbish. Someone, for example, thought that rhyming "smoke" with "Coke" made him a lyricist. ;-)  The way musical creativity works in a group is that everyone plays off each other's musical ideas and sometimes a song pops out of the end of it. Most of the time, musicians don't have any musical ideas beyond a blues 1-4-5 and nothing comes out.  If something does, then you add the lyrics. ;-)

Clearly you missed my point. It all starts with an idea. Something that can anchor the musicians into a common place. That being said, I was going to post the question about how you envision the process unfolding. I've been involved with recording/production enough to know that most songs begin with a lick or melody that needs to be developed. Some begin with lyrics that need the melody to support that. Some begin with a rhythm that sparks the melody and in turn draws out the lyrics. To suggest that NO album ever began with lyrics is naive. I'm pretty sure Jim Morrison wrote his lyrics (poems) and the band supported them with their music, yes?