IF you are main singer of the band and you wanna write a song, u dont want to totally control the song writing process and stuff because maybe you need help or you dont wanna be a writing hog. How would you go about it writing with the other band members. Also what if one or all of them is not good at song writing and they have bad songs and ideas... do you have to have everyone in the band to be good at writing songs in order to have great songs or can one person make a whole difference. PLease help me on this issue!

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Mike

we usually do it like this: we have a person who writes lyrics in the band (no - in our case its not the singer). So we have a bunch of lyrics to choose from.
we enter the rehersal room and someone is like "look i got this and that". then we jam along to it. usually after 1-2 hours we got at least 3 parts/riffs and then we start to construct a song from it.
our singer goes through the lyrics and is like "hmm.. yea - this text will fit". then he starts to come up with vocal lines and we try to come up with a structure for the song which is not too difficult if you have a few riffs and the lyrics. so basically we have an output of at least one song per rehersal.

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Holiness is in right action and courage on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves. What you decide to do every day makes you a good person... or not.
Azrael´s Tricks

so how many songs do you have already? 500?
Don´t you spend more time on one song to make it even better, except for the solo parts?

500? no - we reherse every 2 weeks only since i have to drive 600 km (there and back again) for a rehersal.
its not good to spend weeks on one song alwasy changing this and that for that way you´ll end up having 4 songs after 3 years of weekly reherals and the band breaks up for everyone gets bored (happened to me twice).
one rehersal is enough to make a song work and maybe a second rehersal for some fine-tuning. thats it.

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Holiness is in right action and courage on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves. What you decide to do every day makes you a good person... or not.
Azrael´s Tricks

...always the pragmatist...

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... and that's all I have to say about that.

ALL generalizations are WRONG

[/sarcasm]

Where do you rehearse that you have to drive 600 km? Shows how important music can be for people.
How do you manage the solos. Do you also write them in a few hours or do you spend more time with them?

well - i live in Krems in Lower Austria and the band is in Traunstein Germany. 300 km apart

and the thing with the solos - i improvise them. When we create a song we play it over and over again. so i got more than enough chances to create a good solo. i improvise it every time and keep the parts that i like. Plus i dont play a solo in every song because not every song needs a solo. the music is more important than the individual urge to show off.

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Holiness is in right action and courage on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves. What you decide to do every day makes you a good person... or not.
Azrael´s Tricks