Abundance of one-man "bands" in modern prog

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.

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

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 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.

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

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.

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

Edited by bytor2112 - December 22 2012 at 21:40

The main restriction about one-man projects is the lack of competent, solid drumming.

It's relatively easy for one [really talented] person to be able to play the guitar, bass, mellotron, sing, and produce everything all by himself.

It's noticably harder for any such person to also be able to play the drums. I mean professionally, and skilfully enough for prog rock standards. The best thing you can do is to program the percussion track on a computer. I won't notice the difference. Many people won't notice the difference. But it's just not as cool, or "legit", as a real human drummer.

Tom Ozric wrote: Neelus wrote: Isn't a one-man band kinda like musical masturbation? The end result is similar, but the way you got there is alone... Neelus, your 'morphing Floyd' avatar is sooooo trippy............

Thanks...Yeah, when I saw it I was reminded of those late night "looking in the mirror" experiences.