Abundance of one-man "bands" in modern prog

Simon Railton... great one-man band. His album "Here it is" is a masterpiece.

Edited by bytor2112 - December 22 2012 at 21:40

I was in bands for 25 years. Basically, I would compose songs on my own, including lyrics, then present them to the band. Invariably, their input made the song better than the acoustic rendition I'd come up with alone (but not always). I don't think this is very much different than what Ian Anderson did with Jethro Tull or David Bowie or Page and Plant or Roger Waters. In fact, in my experience it's far more difficult to write a song with the input of 4 or 5 people all at once.

I'm not a drummer so I use bongos and djembes :P

I do believe Cloudkicker and Chimp Spanner speak for their style well enough to lend credence to the rest. However, to me, it is not the creativity that is harmed by the one-man band formula; no, to me, it is often the 'sound' I find to be limited. By this, I mean that one-man bands are often lacking in all of their instruments being performed by a human being, seeing as how it would be difficult in many cases for one person to handle such a task. I say this because of two things: 1. I am a drummer, and percusion instruments are the most likely to be emulated electronically. And 2. I absolutely abhor the use of electronic sounds that are not meant to create ambiance in conjunction with live instruments or are used sparingly for largely thematic reasons.

as one of said modern prog guys with one man bands, I definitely see it as a double edged sword. Doing everything yourself leaves you complete creative freedom so as long as you have hte technical know-how you should be able to execute your artistic vision exactly the way you want to. On the other hand, I agree that without the chemistry of musicians playing together a lot of magic can be lost. my music is very jammy and improvised and it can be tough to keep things sounding natural and in hte moment when you have to record each track yourself one at a time. personally I wish I could clone myself and just have a band of me playing all the different things so each performer still has my ideas and concepts but that's just fantasy haha. I also obviously agree that it can be very beneficial to have other minds to bounce ideas off and have some kind of criticism.

I guess you guys see the obvious fact that all the classical composers were one-man

I enjoy hearing what one person can do when they have a singular vision and carry it through to completion. Given the complexity of some prog, I would think it an advantage to work solo.  Most of the great composers in history composed their incredible music working alone.  I think great music can be realized both ways, solo and collaboratively.

Gerinski wrote: Dean wrote:   You are implying that  band compositions are the result of better inspiration than solo compositions and I cannot agree with that. Then you badly misunderstood me or neglected to read me. I think I made it clear that IMO one-man compositions / performances can be as great as any band effort and that they have my full respect. And sure enough I love Oldfield's work and many more. I just put forward the question whether people share with me the perception that there is an increasing trend in modern prog to have an increasing share of one-man music releases, and if they do, how should we interpret it and extrapolate it towards the future if this trend continues. I clearly said a couple of times that band compositions are not necessarily better, just different and richer in some sense, and I just wonder if such a trend can eventually diminish the share of band compositions and one-band projects may become the dominant way of making music.

Like many I think, I appreciate both.  I love plenty of one-man projects and obviously, love many band projects. I do think it is interesting that one can detect the collaborative touch (or lack thereof) when listening.  On the flip side singular vision can be enthralling in its own way. 

No winners or losers here, it's all good when the talent is there.