I know the term "indie" isn't usually applied the way I'm gonna use it here, so I'll explain. I've been hearing... a Journey <ducks> song in my head for a few days now, and it's led me to revisit not only that album, but the work of many groups whose songs tend to sound like they were written almost note for note by one guy, then given to the members of the band to play. "Don't Stop Believin'" sounds like it could have been played by any group of studio gunslingers, with Steve "Can you tell I grew up listening to Sam Cooke" Perry on vocals, and it would sound the same. Thing is, once I got past the fact that Journey's been disrespected time and again by the "cool" crowd, I started to listen without prejudice and this song -the whole Escape album- is damn good work. Every note is in the right place, and everyone seems to know what the others are gonna do, because they're probably all reading the same score. It doesn't have any of the "character" of Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen's U2 work (If you're a bassist, you have cursed Clayton at some point for having a job you know you could do better), but it is tight, well thought out, well-played music done by professional musicians. Now, on to "Indie" rock. I'm not talking about a small record company. I'm referring to music where someone comes up with a riff or a groove, and everyone else comes up with their parts of the stew. Vocals are added or maybe they came first. The band then discusses what it sounds like, changes are made, and the tune is recorded. This process can take months, and several live performances (especially if the band is a minor club act) before the finished product is available in CD form. My question is: Do you generally prefer rock (I'm limiting this discussion to rock, because it can work well either as deliberate composition and/or group input. Jazz is supposed to be spontaneous, and classical is supposed to be precomposed, so I won't include them) that sounds like it's the work of one composer whose ideas are conveyed note for note through the band members, or music that sounds like everyone made a compositional contribution, or a little of both? Discuss.
Well, yes and no. Jazz for sure. But, depending on your definition of soul, a lot (almost all) of Prince's stuff, as well as a lot of the Commodores and the 80s smooth soul, was written out note for note. Well, you know Prince played everything on most of his albums, so yes, that would fit. I've heard that Ambrosia (never mind that they were White- they were soul, and they were great) wrote their stuff out. Don't know how true it is, tho. The Motown guys, IIRC, worked from a chart- that is, they had chord progressions and accents to work with, and their ideas made up the rest. But I'm not talking about writing as in everyone writing their parts. What I'm really talking about is the one-composer approach. Like what Brian Wilson did with the Beach Boys, writing literally everything, and then going back and playing it in the studio exactly as he wrote it.
I know, I was only joking... The best jazz and soul was written by bands coming together to work out a single riff or chord progression. There are exceptions...both Sly Stone and James Brown (considered by most to be among the best ever) controlled their bands with an iron fist and would blow up if questioned over anything whatsoever. But for the most part, those bands still considered "classic" picked members not for their ability to play what they were told, but for what they'd be able to add.
This is an interesting topic. Here's how it works in my band: I (but sometimes the drummer too) come up with the entire song, lyrics and all. I then make a demo of the song on which I play everything (and do the drums on a drum machine), distribute them to the rest of the band and sit down with the other guys to show them the parts. The goal is then to get the band to sound as close as possible to what I'm hearing in my head. Then we rehearse and perform the songs for months before recording them in the studio. This approach has advantages and disadvantages of course. On one hand, it enables the band to instantly develop a uniform "signature sound" (provided the songs are well written, of course), which a more haphazard system would require months or even years of trial and error to achieve. On the other hand, sometimes the music can get stale of course because only one person is contributing the bulk of the ideas. Also the enthusiasm of the other players sometimes suffers because they don't have a direct emotional stake in the songs. Not surprisingly, I tend to prefer bands that use this systematic approach, as bands that rely heavily on improvisation can be brilliant but also run hot and cold depending on a lot of factors. As sch2383 said, though, if the music sucks then the approach is irrelevant anyway!
Before I got into upright bass and jazz, I played electric in three rock bands (of the garage/local club variety), two of which used the "indie" approach, and one a variation of the single-composer approach. The latter was my first band after starting to learn bass, and that band had two personalities in the guitarist and vocalist when I joined. I was given free rein to work within the context of what the guitarist and drummer had already been playing, so I did create my own parts, but I didn't contribute any songs. The last two bands were much more of a group effort in terms of songwriting, but the result was that we never got that "signature sound" you described. We'd even discussed the fact that we were all over the place stylistically, but we considered ourselves "a refreshing break from bands that sounded the same from song to song". It never occurred to us that people go to clubs to hear the style they like. We also concluded that we'd always sound like us, no matter what we played. What ended up happening was that "us" was spread too far and too thin. We knew who we were, but the audience didn't always know- or care. Ah, the arrogance (and ignorance) of youth. I know now that audiences do in fact want consistency in sound, and we were pretty much just exercising songwriting skills and then going out and playing gigs. I think we just believed as individuals that getting everyone involved was more important than popularity. Again, the arrogance of youth. It was fun, but it wasn't ever going to go anywhere with that approach in the modern era. I will say that one of my favorite bands, Fleetwood Mac (the McVie/McVie/Fleetwood/Buckingham/Nicks lineup- I never cared for any of their others) had three different songwriters, three different lead vocalists and pretty much three different styles. There are songs from all three that I love. It never bothered me one bit to hear those stylistic changes, but I know I'm in the minority there. Another fave band, early U2, has another variation of the "indie" approach, in that they don't get someone to replace Adam Clayton in the studio. It's weird that I can listen to them with Clayton's peculiar (read: error-prone) style and still love the overall product as much as I do. Sometimes I'm not looking for what "should fit"- I'm looking for a sound that conveys something. That unintentional dissonance didn't seem to hurt them, but I have to say that I don't accept it in most of the bands I listen to.
Some of the bands I like fit into Auria's indie category, that have an element of chaos, but usually have been together long enough to create a signature sound. I also like bands that have a more ordered approach to their music. The most important thing for either kind of band, is that they're tight live. How they go about it doesn't matter to me. As for examples, the Slackers from New York have a primary songwriter and use charts, but they also do a lot of improvisation in solos. I can't imagine that the one of the coolest, smoothest, tightest, most wonderful bands in the world, Hepcat, don't use charts because their sound is so clean and pretty much damn-near perfect. I've been seeing them for years, and even with lineup changes, they've stayed completely consistent.
Some of my favorite bands have a signature sound that comes not from the song writer(s), but a non-writing guitarist who has a signature sound. Witness Billy Zoom of X. He's credited with writing only one or two of their songs, but his lead guitar really influences their sound.
I like music that has emotion and feeling, and I don't care if it took 10 minutes or 10 years to write. Rock and Roll, from Journey to Minor Threat, is all about what kind of feeling is evoked in the listener. If it brings something..ANYTHING...out of my soul, it's good music.
I don't think you can break up and characterize music into "unilateral composition" and "multi-lateral composition" according to how it sounds and how you feel about it. Sure, by definition, there is music that was composed by one person, as oposed to a group effort, but I challenge you to characterize the musical charateristics and the listening experience of those pieces according to how they were written. Furthermore, there are aspects of performance and arrangment that greatly impact the listening experience, but are not technically part of the "writing" process. For example, a song may have been written by Brian Wilson, but without Van Dyke Parks, some of otherwordly production ideas attributed to Wilson may have never made their way to vinyl. Nancyb also raises the point of how one particular instrumentalist's style can color a composition. There is just too much nuance to the creative process. And a few niggling points- ?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? Have you heard of Cornelius Cardew or Andrew Hill? One makes what you could call spontaneous classical and another makes composed Jazz. Jazz and classical can be classified many ways, but neither are necesarilly "spontaneous" or "precomposed" by definition.
I'd replace the words "supposed to be" with "generally", "usually", or "best" in that sentence, but the time limit is long past.