Can someone explain how a band puts a song together? From lyrics, how do the individual instruments then find their best “supporting role” for those lyrics. How much say do individual musicians eg. the drummer or lead guitarist have in what and how they play their instruments. Cheers.
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it all depends on the writer. some music is written lyrics first, while other music is written melody first. there are no rules when it comes to songwriting (other than musical theory, but any “rules” are just general guidlines)
I am not a musician, but a friend of mine was in a band. Their process (there are different ways, of course) was that the bassist would “f*** around” with his bass guitar. The other band members would throw at it what they think sounds good. Lastly the singer would write lyrics to the instrumental.
But as I said, there are different ways to get it done. For example, the singer could first write lyrics and the others go at those.
Or one guy writes everything.
It really is very much dependent on the artist/band, and even then, they may use different strategies for different songs. You might wake up with a melody in your head and stick some placeholder words in like ‘scrambled eggs’ while you nail the tune (Paul McCartney with Yesterday), or maybe the singer writes all the lyrics then gives those to the guitarist to write the music (The Smiths), maybe the guitarist has a little lick he thinks is worth expanding on during a practice session, maybe the whole band brings ideas to the studio and they shape the songs as they record, etc, etc.
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