It was a real challenge for me too as a guitarist who was mostly interested in doing original material.   Putting lyrics to music is hard enough, but putting music to lyrics is an art I have yet to fully grasp.   Like many creative artists, sometimes you just have to make things up as you go, discard what doesn't work and hopefully have a few good things left over.

^ Then you had people like Peter Gabriel or John Lennon who didn't write in a necessarily logical or linear way, adopting more of an abstract, poetic approach.

I'm not (likely) the best suggestion at all ... but I do think that being able to "see" your inner movie is important, and from your question and comments, I think that you ask too many questions, and are getting ideas from all the places around ... except one ... the one that is inside your head.

This was always a problem, for example, with actors on a stage in rehearsal and even in the "lab" where you worked experiments to improve your ability to concentrate and respond ... and sometimes, I think that this is impossible in music, but I am not convinced of that ... since too often, I feel like folks are looking out, instead of in.

There is no "secret" that I have ever found, and I can name 100 films, easily, that were about the inspiration that created the art ... and all of them are different and all of them are magnificent, and would help anyone figure out what to try later ... with one option ... when you "get it", the first thing you say is ... I didn't need that!

I write a lot, and in my poetry and novels, I do not use "my mind" at all ... I simply "watch" that movie inside my head and write like crazy to keep up with it, last night it stopped with a young girl seeing 20 paintings, all the "same" but the clock of the frame was turned 5% in each one of the pictures, otherwise the same, so by the time you had the last painting, it was almost upside down ... and I had no comments, and the only thing I can remember is the young girl pointing to it ... and asking why the same picture? ... I'll know tonight when I get the movie going again!

Things change, and things go ... in many weird ways ... I'm not sure that we all can get anything out of it, since it is not "ours" or a part of you ... 

Last bit (paraphrased) ... in the Edgar Froese book there is a nice bit about David Bowie, who was struggling on the piano with a song ... and the producer finally told everyone to leave ... look guys, David is looking for his voice in these words ... there is nothing we can do for him ... everyone ... good night ... and he left David alone ... sometimes ... there are no words that we can even give you ... I now say things like ... you gotta find your own voice ... and the rest will be easy!

I think the "beginning" is the most important part ... in my case, it was the element of surprise that helped the actors on the stage, and in my imagination ... while directing them ... I did not set out to do what has been considered "psychic exercises" for the actors, but what I did do worked magnificently and it created a communication between the two actors that was way too good ... and one of the actors had never been on stage before ... but his willingness to concentrate and SEEING that he could do it, defined how he did ... really well.

mcentra wrote: ... I can think all I want about it and ask all the questions I want but none of that is going to get anything done. The only person who knows how to sing these songs is me. But until now, the only person who knows what music should be put to these lyrics has been unwilling to do so. ...

You and I can not sit and prove this ... and you can look at bands like GONG, who had folks doing their own thing, and it worked ... and no one argued with the Witch and her part in the story, no one argued with the wind instruments, and no one argued with the bass being "too bassy" ... (in Mike's own words!) ... as an example ... sometimes, the interplay and allowance of these things to happen, works ... it just does, in ways that none of us can not even conceive ... listening to the title track "YETI" from Amon Duul 2's album, the first thing that you are going to ask is ... how can that be an improvisation? Even I, so experienced in improvisations, will call it a "guided improvisation" where a suggestion and detail might be discussed and handled ... and Miles Davis would likely fit here as he used to suggest .. Bill's turn, then John's turn, then my turn, then Uncle's turn ... and then we come together ... with no idea of what the theme would be when they come together ... maybe a note or two ... but nothing else? Very scary to today's musicians that only know music by the DAW.

The other thing to remember ... sometimes the lyrics and wording is the problem ... and you do not have to change the lyrics to something else ... you just have to detail its inflection and usage a bit differently ... and I like to use the example of Carl Palmer in TARKUS when Greg says ... don't give me poop ... and the drumming stops for an accent ... and this is where people fail lyrics ... the drumming needs to be about the words, not the beat ... you have to know what to do when YOU SHOULD NOT BE DOING ANYTHING .... except making your words clear. And it's hard to show this ... but one example that I gave suggestions to, sadly had a drummer that obviously lacked confidence, and did not know how to get off the "beat" and then return to his comfort zone ... the same 4/4 thing. Basically he was not listening to the words or the music ... he was only trying, HARD, to get back to the easy beat ... by signaling with a hard snare hit ... that he wanted to get back to something he was more comfortable with ... because not a single of those snare hard hits makes any sense whatsoever ... and I'm not sure that these folks will ever hear/experience someone like Mani Neumeier (Guru Guru - early stuff specially!) who used to say ... I don't do rhythm ... I'm an electric guitar! AND he just about drives the whole thing ... even when it is experimental and just noise ... or you can use Jaki Leibezeit (CAN) as an example of what to do when transitioning from beat to touch, and then back (Bel Air and Chain Reaction to Quantum Physics) for something that 99 out of 100 drummers are not able to do ... the least possible, and almost nothing ... and sometimes, this helps define lyrics and moments in the music ... THAN ANY LYRICS or otherwise.

I like the idea ... 

I have to admit that I never really tried to do things by using something else, since in directing you are working with something in front of you, and the only thing I did, really, was making sure that all the parts came together smoothly and helped each other get better.

But I did find/do some crazy things ... in the pre-show of one play, I goofed around with the music, and one day the the actor was "warming up" on the music ... and when I saw that it was when I decided that I would have an "open stage" as the audience is coming in, and he was taking steps to the "beat" of the music ... and later you could see him use that in a section of the play as he follows/imitates the king (Escuriel - Michel de Ghelderode) ... and in all honesty, it was one of those things that just happen ... and sometimes you just have to allow them to happen ... 

In my writing, as mentioned above, even in film and music reviews, it is all 100% intuitive for me ... and there is no "pre-thinking" or "ideas" for the review to rely on ... it's pretty much how I felt about the whole thing, and what I saw ... which, really, is the same thing as writing poetry and my stories ... you just flow with that inner film as fast as you can write it ... and often pieces are missing, but if you have enough, the ability to synchronize and blend the open moments, end up coming together alright ... and this has been one of the tough/hard parts of most work I do ... I have gone back and reworded some sentences and lines for clarity, but have never had to change anything from "the movie" that I saw in my head! This is specially important in poetry, because it is all about the feel in that moment, and it is also the reason why I use the "pauses" all the time ... as they used to be named "thinking pauses" in the days of Harold Pinter in theater (I never found any thinking in there, btw!!!) ... whereas I am merely allowing the visual to spread and help connect to the next line.

I would say the answer depends on exactly what you're looking for in your final product. 

Would it be in the style of some of the longer works of Alex, Geddy and Neil..?  Like 2112 or Hemispheres for example..?  Does it even have to sound like a Rush album..?    Or could it be done in some other style..?  Like CTTE or Awaken..?  Or along the lines of something Tangerine Dream might do like Force Majeur..?   Or would you want a bunch of shorter tracks all coming together to tell a story like on Scenes from a Memory or similar..?   or do you not have a preference for any particular style or format as long as the final result just works..?   

More detail is needed here I think. 

I might be interested in helping you out myself as I've been scratching around for a new project for quite a while now, although I'll confess that it's always been the other way around for me,  setting lyrics to completed music rather than music to completed lyrics, so I don't know : maybe I could help you out and maybe not, but I wouldn't mind having a peek at your lyrics to see where you're coming from with them. 

Most of the music I've ever recorded has been along the lines of concept material in one style or another ranging from outright metal, to arty BJH style prog and acoustic based power ballads,  to pure synth and electronica ala TD or Vangelis. 

I'm designated as a Crossover artist here on PA.

To date I have 12 long form tracks of over 20 minutes each in length, with the longest of them being slightly over 30 minutes, as well as some long(ish) tracks ranging from between 7-16 minutes, and a shed load of shorter songs, comprising completed instrumentals or incomplete songs without lyrics which I haven't yet released and which might never even be released if they don't get lyrics added to them. 

Over the last couple of years I've started writing my own lyrics for my music as 9 times out of 10 I've found it impossible to match lyricists and vocalists with my songs and gotten so frustrated with trying other people out who just don't get what I need and deliver such a poor performance that I find I often get on better just doing it all myself.   

Drop me a note if you want to chat further.

Edit : so I just read through all your posts and see that you're on the cusp of deciding to go ahead and just do it all yourself.  That's great : it's the primary reason I do most of my own work myself - because I've never been able to find the right people who have the ability and the necessary skills to do a good job,  or who are willing to work with me on a project which isn't their own,  so I get exactly where you're coming from with that.

The only real question you have to ask yourself now, and perhaps more importantly to answer honestly,  is whether or not you actually have all the required skills on guitar, bass, keys, drums (or drum programming) as well as musical composition, engineering and production skills in Logic  - and of course having all the right studio gear to make the whole thing a success..... good monitors which give a true flat response sound for example...

Soundcloud, Facebook and other social media sites are littered with the music of those who don't have these necessary skills and/or equipment, but think they do - recording poorly written and poorly played material on iphones, ipads and the like, and being fooled into thinking they're doing something special, amazing, original or different because their so called  "followers"  tell them they are, but who are really just leading them up the garden path and telling them lies to make them feel good about themselves.....so be honest with yourself and don't fall into that particular trap, and always be as analytical and as critical as you possibly can be with your own work.

Anyway, I wish you success.

Having done a lot of directing in theater and some work in film with actors, it is "weird" to me, to think that you know and have an idea of what you want the final product to be ... because this changes in the process of creation and elevation of the material to a certain point ... and eventually ends up being about "something else" that you and I have not thought about, or expected ... sort of like the stories about "Friday Night" audiences in theaters ... when you have no idea what they are going to react to, or laugh at, or groan ... and many actors, and musicians, end up STUCK ... not knowing how to react when they are expecting something in that spot ... HOWEVER ... this would not be the case with someone playing the same song for the 700th time ... in which case, he probably doesn't care about the reactions ... you can even ask Jimmy about that ... he will tell you it's not about the reaction ... it's about how he's playing and he can't make the changes at the moment ... he's frozen inside another moment doing something else.

I do not, HONESTLY, have a good idea of how to work lyrics into a piece of music, but then I don't see Vangelis or Mike Oldfield worry about lyrics a whole lot, either ... and the best example here is the one from Edgar Froese's book about David Bowie, when everyone was sent home with David struggling at the piano with some lyrics ... and Tony V says that David had not "found his voice" in this song yet ... so rehearsals were over ... and he will let David do his thing until he finds it ...  and sometimes, I think this is what is needed ... you have to do this alone, not pressured because someone else is there ... or vice versa ... and then you find folks that have a very good free form "beat poetry" style ... Daevid Allen and even Gilly, were magnificent at this, and they could light up any moment ... and did ... EVEN in conversation! 

One last bit here ... and it was something about Gilly that was special ... it wasn't the "lyrics" for her ... it was the mood and the feelings ... and she says that she merely allowed the feelings to come out and express them as needed or worked during that moment ... and that's where "lyrics" can be a problem for someone writing a "song" ... it is easy when you know that it has 12/16 meters, but when it is longer, this is another story! THEN, I would think that the lyrics have to help the music and the music HAS TO SUPPORT the lyrics ... not just be another one of those ... just use a major here to make it happier and ... over there we will do a minor since the words are sad ... kind of thing ... you have to expand this better and DEFINE, when the feeling flies, and when the music flies ... since it is rather RARE when you see both do so at the same time ... something very visible in the psychedelic days, but has lost its way and "theme" since the mid 1970's ...

One last detail ... and this is interesting ... THE DOORS ... you know they were film majors ... at least a couple of them were ... and guess what the lyrics of their songs are ... VERY VISUAL and they are sung like IT IS REAL ... and this is something that you might study a bit and define better in your music ... allow the VISUAL TO DEFINE THINGS A BIT MORE ...however, you must remember one thing ... what you see, what you want and what you find, AND what the audience finds on Friday Night, and the audience finds on Sunday Night ... are 5 COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THINGS AND RESULTS ... and this means that you have to concentrate on your "completeness" as a piece of music ... and you have to forget everything else ... 

Lovely subject, but really difficult to define and study ... since a lot of the answers are in the variable area ... and something that is really difficult ... but if you ask Mick how he finds lyrics ... he says ... it was right for that guitar part!

Yes I understand that concept.  A lot of my own songs have been started with something specific in mind and finished up as something entirely different, and occasionally as something completely unexpected which would never have occurred to me at the start of the writing process...

I'm gonna thrown an elephant at you! 

Now that the music is done, if you sit and close your eyes, when you listen to it ... 

1. what do you see? 

2. what do you feel?

And your answers are very important ... since you might say you don't see a whole lot, except one thing ... that dag part by that 2nd clarinet is stupid ... but ... guess what? ... only you can hear that, I can't!

The 2nd one is harder ... because you have to separate yourself from what you wrote ... if you hear this for 10 minutes and all you see is a sunset while you are at the beach laying down and your dog is goofing around a little bit and then coming back to lay down next to you ... kind of thing ... now you have some "continuity" to a theme, that is not NOTE RELATED or MUSIC RELATED .... it is VISUAL ... and your ability to add some lyrics here are easier ... for me anyway.

I do "sound experiments" on my VST synths, and create poetry on top of it, and it is the SOUND of it that brings out the words, and I have to take care and not "edit" anything, so I can develop the feel of the words during that moment, INSTEAD OF INHIBITING IT with thoughts, ideas, doubts, concepts and what not ... at that moment, the clarity of the feeling is all that is important, and developing that is important ... it will help you later to define lyrics and moments in your own work, and how you use them ... but this is a different process than Mick's who merely finds words that fit a certain beat or jump or this or that which took place in rehearsal (or concert) that he memorized and then they developed a song around it and his lyrics.

However, HOW many rock bands (specially) write lyrics ... is insane and crazy ... and you might as well start with Frank Zappa ... and all you gonna learn is ... it doesn't matter what you do ... it only matters how you mix them up, because anything/everything can fit in one way or another.

One recommendation ... pay attention to the singers that are more "actors" than they are singers ... they are not about "notes" as much as they are about feelings ... and 2 of the best? Christian Decamps (Ange) and Peter Hammill (Van der Graff Generator) ... and then one of the best poets in music ... Roy Harper ... and the turkey goes on stage and does things almost completely ad lib!

If you take a look at music history ... there is more "change" in the 20th Century than any other century prior to that, and I think that the difference is "recording" ... since before that we were depending on the written music, and it did not show enough "progressive" changes of any kind, that showed anything worth while noticing ... and since the advent of the 20th Century, this has changed, and when "recording" appeared, it changed even more, and then tape appeared in the recording studios (instead of direct to the platter -- see the TOM DOWD special!!!!!!! A must!!!) ... and you could clean up and fix a few things, be it in rehearsal, or in the tape itself.

Recording, also made "possible" the ability to listen to other things, and then compare ... thus, you have the very first "confusion" in your head as to how to do something, since all of a sudden ... wow ... they didn't use violins ... that's a guitar! And it likely changed the way music is heard and understood ... at least within the popular circles, because 20th Century classical music is a mess ... and its history continues to ignore the Synthesizer, even though it does "credit" the early pioneers with something ... that became a part of the music that was impossible to write down on paper, and became a sort of inspiration for a lot of new things ... the sound "experiments" all of a sudden had something in them, that was useful!

AZF wrote: ... Rock is in a seriously critical condition. PROG is even worse. ... I know that remark will cause a list of modern Prog bands, but how many of those are selling huge numbers? How many are selling to at least cover the costs of the electricity to play and record the music? ...

All music, has been ... in a serious critical condition in its history ... and there are a lot of stories, films, and what not that discuss this and how someone wanted to do this, and were told they couldn't ... so you end up with the proverbial Mozart at the bar, totally drunk, because the girls and the bar folks loved the fun and the far out bits that some folks in court with staves up their buttocks could not appreciate! And that was not the only example, as some folks, even in the 20th Century, were laughed at when their music was first presented ... 

Costs ... today, a lot of this is a lot less of a problem than before ... 75 years ago, you were a "composer" if you could write something that was more than 4 lines on a staff (as was the case in rock music!!!!! the cheapest music example of all!) ... and you could look at some opera ... with 35/40 lines on various staves of the music! Rock music and synthesizers, have simplified all this into almost nothing, and a VST, can be used these days, and many of them are free. You still need a reasonable computer and a DAW that is worth its nickels, but don't try writing something with 20 lines on a staff ... that almost everyone, specially here, will laugh and say is stupid!

But then, you look at Vangelis, Sakamoto, Oldfield ... and that is way more than just 4 lines on a staff ... AND IT WORKS ... and even Mike will tell you that "music is cheap" today ... compared to the days that he had to spend in the studio to create Tubular Bells!

AZF wrote: ... Even Poetry, that's in a worse state. Go to any bookstore and pick up a modern book. Look at the huge blank spaces underneath the few lines of words. Look at the size of the page, look how tiny the font is and then look at the price. ...

Poetry is, usually, at the forefront of "changes" ... and where things end up going ... I would almost say that it was the "free form" of a lot of literature, poetry included, in the 1950's that helped develop a lot of stuff, up to and including music, and even, possibly "jazz", although I of the opinion that there are more than one "source" of inspirations, and none of them are the "form", or the "final" edition of it all.

The problem with the "word" (or WORD as I usually say) is the commercial attitudes, and in a time and place where there is no respect for anything except what sells, it means that the words are not being heard, and it is real easy to say ... they aren't good, and the bookstore is stupid ... and the folks that go there are even more so, because now they can get it on the net ... far easier to find, too! ... but the experience of walking around POWELL's here in Portland? .... the Internet will never come close to showing you what you can find and experience ... not even close! 

And this is the problem with a lot of the folks ... and I don't like to criticize the fans here, since they are all a part of the whole thing in more than one way, but in the end, I question their love and appreciation for the arts, and music, when they only want one thing ... what is weird to me, is that I am not partial to one thing in music ... there isn't anything that I have heard in the past 55 years that I have not enjoyed in some way ... I may not like some country music ... but saying that Dolly does not have the voice is like saying that some folks just won't listen ... to music and how many ways it can be done and appreciated! I may not care a whole lot for some rap, but some of it is down right very good poetry ... although we don't like to confuse the two ... but then we haven't stopped to hear folks like Gil Scott Heron, The Last Poets and others do rap in 1967 or something like it, and even have it on a movie! And that was kinda strange and weird, but it made sense ... you could see someone "stretching" poetry ... and music! 

AND IT WAS THE WORDS ... that mattered ... THE ONLY PROBLEM? Even today, those words are ignored and rendered meaningless! And my friend, those words are NOT meaningless, when one looks at some history since the 1960's specially in America!

moshkito wrote: ... but the experience of walking around POWELL's here in Portland? .... the Internet will never come close to showing you what you can find and experience ... not even close!

Love me some Powell's ~

Almost no responses. 

The reason for this is that singers generally don't want to do studio stuff, they want a live audience to adore them. Either that or, for some bizarre reason, they want to be paid, despite having no more creative input than any other musicians on a project. And perhaps less. 

So I change tack and say "Just lyrics, please". 

What follows is a deluge of utter infantile crap, people rhyming "have a smoke" with "drink a Coke" / "There'll beeee no more sorrow..... tomorrow" rubbish. Ah yes, thinks I, lyric writing is a skill, and most people who think they can put simple rhymes together are somehow talented. Nope. Lyric writing is an artform, and whilst most people think they can write good lyrics, they can't. It's the same as watching the X Factor, when most people are convinced that they can sing. Well, yes, anyone can sing, but singing and singing well are two different fish of kettles. 

Time to change approach again. "I'll write the lyrics, you just sing."

Back come responses from people who think they can just send me an mp4 of them singing into a mobile phone. "Do I have to have a microphone ? " etc. 

Er, well, yes, decent mic, some recording software, preferably your own home studio. Oh look, you can't actually sing in tune and your timing is crap. How surprising. Next !! 

It's an exercise in frustration at best, trying to find decent vocalists or lyricists. Guess what ? I just stick to instrumentals nowadays. 

Some time ago, someone with frankly not a clue decided he'd written a load of songs on piano and I was going to play sax over them (cue rustling of sheet music) in the wine bars and restaurants of Manchester. 

"That's going to be a bit loud for a restaurant" says I.

"O u can use a muter" comes the text reply. 

"You can't mute a sax", I tell him, "put a mute down the bell and the noise comes out of the sides, and besides, if you're playing, you have to play at the volume the piece requires, or it sounds awful. What key are these songs in ? "

"E major"

"Right, that puts me in F or C sharp, far too many sharps and flats. "

"What do u mean"

So he didn't know that the sax was a transposing instrument, either. Summary. "I've had an idea and now everyone else can play along with it and make it happen. Because *I* have made an idea."

And, sorry, what you're saying, Mcentra, is "I've written some lyrics. Now all you musicians out there can spend weeks / months putting my idea to music. May take a very long time, but here's the words". 

Which gives your fellow musicians no creative input, boring, forces them to do what you want to do, not necessarily what they want to do. Playing music is fun if you play with other people and bounce creative ideas off them, everyone gets to do some of their own thing but it's best done as an artistic compromise. And you've taken that side of the compromise away. You might have lyrics. Unless they're utterly stunning and almost Biblically revelatory...... there are other lyrics available. Or none. Or "lets just play and we can think up some lyrics later". 

Unfortunately, lyrics tend to (not always) be an afterthought to a song, or at least play second fiddle. On occasion, lyrics can drive the song, but music is written by musicians and not lyricists, in general. If you can sing, join a band, this gives you the possibility of *contributing* lyrics on a fair and equal basis, but turning up with a few sheets of A4 and then expecting a group of musicians are going to automatically come up with a concept album involving months of work and practice is almost guaranteed not to happen.

Unless you get the cheque book out and commission some music for money, of course. 

Weird ... that I have never really felt that some lyrics are better than others ... well, I suppose that we could say that some things are banal, some are Mick and some Bowie, and then some others ... a poet/poetess that no one knows from anywhere, and you and I never heard of them.

I'm not sure there is a "method" to doing this ... and I have always found two examples ... that seem to stump folks a lot, but they explain a lot of things, even though understanding them is heck for you and I ... how do you teach that, or explain it? You don't .. you have to allow it to just "live" and "be" ... because that is what its "nature" is.

One example: Ginsburg ... you can read his stuff, and it does not jump off the page and get you fired up. But you listen to his 2 minutes in "Tonite We All Love In London" ... and all of a sudden, this is strong stuff ... I can not explain the difference on this ... but I like to joke ... one is live, and the other is memorex ... with a smile behind it ... because "being there" is often more important than the recording, specially when it's live and the paper book is not even available in most bookshops! Likewise, you think many prog'rs here will go listen to it, or get his little book? 

Example two: Peter Michael Hamel has the story of the old man playing a one string instrument on top of the mountain and he is singing ... I got it ... I got it ... I got it ... and the two students that came over for lessons looked at each other and asked ... Got what?

Example three: This one is about lyrics AND a harmonica ... because they went together ... and it is about Paul Butterfield ... and his line that is spectacular that really confuses people, is ... I play one note and I play it well! 

Words, in Paul's case came via the harmonica, and in his last years, the harmonica was finishing up a sentence ... but this is something that is strictly for someone that sings and plays at the same time ... and both of these are/were an extension of who he was as a person ... his playing was more important than having to say anything ... 

Well, we can always look at MEATLOAF ... in his book ... "I can't help it ... I'm an actor that happens to sing!" ... and a lot of fans don't like this style, which is also very strong in Europe and is quite well done and used in a lot of bands.

I think, eventually, this is about "YOU" and what you see and do ... but if your composition is just some more notes, or ideas that you think that these notes "represent", then, in my experience, the ability to add some lyrics gets harder ... sometimes, things match, when someone has a good feel for the music or the lyrics, and it makes things easier ... but this is probably really difficult to find ... there are a lot of "singers" in music and on the Internet ... and I like to say, not in a mean way ... that while they can do notes, they can not sing at all. And this is an issue in a lot of the pop music out there, and you have these girls trying hard to make a song come alive, and in my ears its falling apart faster than ever.

Last example ... The TOSCA aria ... find Gigli's version and listen to it ... it makes you cry ... find Pavarotti's version, and your ears will hurt for a while ... he has the power for it, but lacks the finesse and smoothness. AND the hard part here is how this can hurt the music for a lot of folks ... and almost the same thing happens to CARMEN ... with Maria Callas, and you go wow ... and then someone else, and it doesn't seem to carry as strongly.

I can relate to Dave's posts in reverse ... I have been told by many folks that my poetry is "musical", and while I can see that, I never really thought so, although I can turn on my Jupiter 8, find a sound that works with me, and I can create meandering words over it ... some of it just thoughts ... and some of it just poetry, and I have no idea how/when one starts and the other ends, but they go together just fine. What is weird is that I have never gotten a good chance to study music and learn an instrument (would have been piano and I would be in a synth in weeks!) ... which sometimes makes the comments I say sound a bit hollow, and they are mere "translations" of things I see and find, which music helps me do ... thus creating new things inevitably brings out a few things, and then comes the worse part .. hearing it back and figuring out what to do with it! To me, they are just "music poems".

What Dave has gone through is a bummer, and it really takes the taste of "music" out of a lot of folks, and I would say it is a credit to his playing that finally said ... I know what I gotta do ... and my only comment is ... wtf Dave? Who told you that you had to sing? ... why can't you just voice ... or "comment" lightly until you get the feel for it? Do it "poetry" style! Just "tone poems" as the Germans have called it without words. And who says a tone can not have words? Or feelings?

The problem in playing in a group, as I'm sure you know is that "everyone has to go home with a balloon". That's why (after a lot of this) I'm now a studio musician only. I started learning to play multiple instruments as I found that collaboration rarely works. When it does, it's fantastic, but being in a group is like being married to another four people, all with different expectations and different ways of doing things. If it works, great, if it doesn't, it turns very quickly into an ugly situation where friends get hurt. 

As a suggestion, there are a number of collaborative music sites out there, but very few are aimed at what I'd call "proper" music, it's mainly kids messing about. It could be worth you trying something collaborative over the internet, getting some basic stuff together and then seeing if someone, for example, wants to add a more professional bass or keyboard part. The problem I find with studio music is that the spontaneity of course disappears, but it can work at times. Really, you make your own luck, so the more you advertise, the more chance you have of finding someone, although I think it'll be a lot of hard work. The good thing is that when you meet likeminded musicians, they tend to stay around for multiple projects. 

It might be an idea just to do one short piece to start with. Of course, this leads to the problem that other pieces may not have the same orchestration (goodbye concept album) but it might work. 

Another approach could be to do this, see the concept album as just another project and work on something else at the time until the opportunity to do a bigger project arises ? You get all the pleasure of creating something else in the interim. Also, starting from first principles on a project gives everyone in it the chance of some creative feedback, so that keeps people happy. You can do some work with them, and if a long term relationship comes out of it, then mention "concept album". 

Good luck, anyway !! Hope it works out for you. 

I find it difficult to find musicians who can improvise and aren't interested in the money. They're a rare commodity these days. Which explains the state of the current musical landscape. 

I have a profile on Bandmix, https://www.bandmix.co.uk/dave365268/ - it says 

"Very experienced sax player, been playing since 1976. Looking to jam with musicians local to Macclesfield. Just for fun, jam sessions and studio work only. Paid session work considered.

Not only are the texts brilliant, but listen to the music behind it.

Hi,

You did more than fine, and I applaud your dedication to the subject, even though it seems like ... no one can really see inside everyone's mind to see where it comes from, and most of us don't have that ability anyway ... besides being told that we are too old now to know anything, right?

All in all, for me, this is a two way street ... from acting work to actors, some are more mental than the others who are more intuitive, but it all sounds fine in the end, so the way it is done, is not the issue for me ... the process that gets the answer is, and (of course!!!) that is the deer in the headlights moment ... it happens or it doesn't.

I can see how music can create lyrics ... being a writer I can also see how lyrics (I use "words) can create music ... thus, trying to define one over the other is a bit crazy ... I can create poems, over almost any TD piece of music ... btw, the oddest thing ... NONE from the folks that kept going since EF, including the redone pieces ... so for me, it's like its "soul" is missing ... and we know it is, and the rest of the folks have not been able to create their own "soul" for the music they are doing, and I think that too much of it is about their knowledge and use of the instrument, a lot more than it is about what comes out of it. The "sound" itself is not showing them anything ... it's just a tree swinging ... another bird chirping ... kind of thing that we ignore, so to speak.

It's not the same for everyone ... for example, as much as I like your material, it is really difficult to bring up "imagery" with it (for me), and I think that may have to do with how fast you switch gears, and maybe (what do I know) do not develop a bit, or piece, further.

One issue here ... sometimes, in wording or "lyrics" people are expecting some sort of rhyme or some sort of meter that matches the music, and this is a serious problem, specially if the music itself is a sort of stream of consciousness that is not necessarily "centered" for any kind of wording ... and still some folks can match it up with something ... and you and I can find this in Frank Zappa and others. With one exception ... in most cases FZ did not do this to show off what he knew, but to show that things could be mixed together just fine, and he succeeded where most failed.

Thus, you and I could say, it doesn't matter ... any words will fit, if we figure out HOW to say them, and HOW to use them, so they do not detract from the music, or vice versa. I always thought that folks like Mick and Bowie did this ... and did it well!

In the Klaus Schulze DVD with Lisa, there are 2 addons ... one with SW which is crap, and the other about an engineer, having found something inside of the piece that was "incomplete" and he wanted to fix that with this and that ... and Klaus agreed to it. It just gives you an idea of how you can see inside something and find a bit here or there that wakes you up ... and this is important in music ... not just the melody that puts the baby to sleep.