Prog !! is it a one man effort , or a Teamwork !

   Nothing to add , my Question is above !!   

It's always a band effort in my opinion.

The ideas may well eminate from one person but unless he or she plays everything on the album surely the end product is a melding of the idea and the execution.

It always makes for better music when the personalities are fused. And even better when every single person is 100% behind every part. I usually keep going until that happens.

The only One-Man-Effort that really works for me is Mike Oldfield. It might be because he has always been a lone bard. People like IanAnderson, who may have thought they were the only or most important ingredient in a stew, weren't. He may have been the meat, but beef stew without the rest of it it's just soggy meat.

Sorry, I love Ian. But he wasn't Jethro Tull.

cstack3 wrote: Some would have us think it is a one-man effort (think of Bruford calling Anderson "Little Napoleon"!) but, as a musician and band mate of some great musicians, I can tell you that it is a band effort.   Some members contribute more than others, and if you think of their solo releases, you can get an idea of their contributions as composers vs. players.  For example, Chris Squire's solo catalog is rather sparse compared to Anderson's.   When it clicks, it really clicks!  I can't tell you the joy & power that happens onstage when a band is truly connecting on a very high level.  It's nearly indescribable.

Obviously there are many solo projects out there that were the product of a single artist, but as the member of a (prog-ish) band I can testify to the fact that the contribution of every band member is vital to the success of a musical project.  I write the majority of my band's songs, but they would never be nearly as good without the input of my band members.  I do most of the basic composing (and when someone else has a basic idea I usually arrange it) but the other guys typically work their own parts out along the basic harmonic structure - and I know nothing about drums so my drummer writes all his own parts.  Many of my songs would have been unbearably annoying had the rest of the band not had vital input in their composition (like "do you really need that third guitar solo and does this song really need to be 8 minutes long?) and often a part added to an already composed song completely changes it's character and makes it better; for example, we just got a second guitar player who has added so much to our sound - I had written a singer-songwriter type thing that the band was working on, and Jim (the other guitar player) came in and started playing this dark, slightly dissonant arpeggio over the chords that completely changed the character of the song and more poignantly illustrated the theme of the piece.

So yeah, it's a band effort.

Horizons wrote: It's always a band effort in my opinion. No question.  It's ridiculous to say that Gilmour is the reason PF produced their albums solely. Same with Fripp and the others that could be considered for this list.

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trackstoni wrote:    Nothing to add , my Question is above !!

Ambient Hurricanes wrote: Obviously there are many solo projects out there that were the product of a single artist, but as the member of a (prog-ish) band I can testify to the fact that the contribution of every band member is vital to the success of a musical project.  I write the majority of my band's songs, but they would never be nearly as good without the input of my band members.  I do most of the basic composing (and when someone else has a basic idea I usually arrange it) but the other guys typically work their own parts out along the basic harmonic structure - and I know nothing about drums so my drummer writes all his own parts.  Many of my songs would have been unbearably annoying had the rest of the band not had vital input in their composition (like "do you really need that third guitar solo and does this song really need to be 8 minutes long?) and often a part added to an already composed song completely changes it's character and makes it better; for example, we just got a second guitar player who has added so much to our sound - I had written a singer-songwriter type thing that the band was working on, and Jim (the other guitar player) came in and started playing this dark, slightly dissonant arpeggio over the chords that completely changed the character of the song and more poignantly illustrated the theme of the piece. So yeah, it's a band effort.