I agree. I wish James was at the studio and having everything happen more naturally. With James not being there, it doesn't come off as a group effort. I feel like the band needs to sit in the studio and work on everything together.
It seems to me that James has been very uncomfortable to sing around his own band members since forever. I mean, just watch the making of Systematic Chaos (he seems pissed at MPs suggestions)...and ever since he's recorded away from the band.
Yeah, you could not be more incorrect about that.
But anyway, to go back to the writing process as it has functioned in the band for quite some time, it really isn't that hard to understand for the most part. Some of the details of this may be a
little bit off, but in terms of the big picture, I am confident this is pretty close:
In the beginning, the four musicians minus the singer, would jam out songs together, work them and re-word them, do demos, etc. This is the model JM commented on in the WDADRU commentary.
Eventually, they shifted away from this and were not really doing demos anymore. They would write
mostly in the studio, with JP (and sometimes others, but mostly JP) maybe bringing in some partial ideas that were worked up beforehand. In terms of the "writing process," JP and Jordan would come up with most of the chord progressions and melodies. MP's "writing" did not consist nearly as much of writing chord progressions and melodies, but was more on contributing to
song arranging and writing his drum and percussion parts, and making suggestions for individual parts of songs. Same with Myung. And, again, most of that writing process took place in the studio together (with exceptions every now and then, such as Wither).
Where this album is different is that John and Jordan got together in studio without MM and JM and wrote the finished songs. I suspect that as to bass and drum parts, JP wrote basic parts to go with the music, but MM and JM used that as a baseline to either follow or deviate as they saw fit. But the songs were basically brought to the band as "finished songs" rather than all four writing the songs together. In terms of JP's and JR's influence on the songs, at the end of the day, it probably isn't all that different since JP and JR would have come up with most of the chord progressions and melodies in the past anyway. The only thing that is missing is that JM and MM would not have had the opportunity to offer input, if any, while the songs were being assembled. Their input would have come only afterward as they were writing their own parts and during the recording process.
All in all, I would say that in terms of writing credit, it is a big distinction in how it is done in the music industry. But in terms of what we as the audience are hearing as the final product, there isn't nearly as big a difference as some in this thread have presumed. Given how the band has written in the past, even if JM and MM would have been together with JP and JR to offer input, I doubt we would have heard drastically different songs at the end of the day. In the grand scheme of things, changes would have been relatively minor. But having the writing process go the way it did on this album allowed JP to keep a certain feel and focus that he wanted for this project. He had a specific vision for this album, and to make sure that he was able to keep that vision focused and keep the feel that he wanted in the final product, he felt this was the best way to achieve that, and it seems to have accomplished that. So to answer the question in the original post, no, I do not think there is any need for concern.
Topic: Petrucci & Rudess sole writers; concern? (Read 10887 times)
