Guitar is not the most important instrument in a song

While playing in Kapela, a Megadeth-like rock band, in 97, I had big problems with how new songs came to life there. The way we created new songs (not composed, because it’s hard to call “compose” when I refer to this way of doing things) was somehow a strange one, however, explainable if you think it was a guitar-based band.

In 99% of the cases, everything started with a guitar riff, a hard, distorted riff, then the bass and drums came in, kind of in a jam. If the feeling was good, then we used to say that OK, until here we have the intro, then lyrics come in, then chorus, solo, etc. After everything was in place, the lead singer usually had to come up with a melody and with some lyrics. And so a new song was born!

This way, an album and a demo came to life, a demo that I put my guitar on in the studio, too. The album was released before me joining the band so I can not tell very much about it.

The songs weren’t bad at all, if you think about it, they had very complex guitar parts, were very elaborated, just that I have always felt we were doing something wrong. I had a discussion with my guitar colleague back then, the lead guitar and it remained something like well, this is how things go, there’s nothing wrong with it!

I left the band after 1 year and I have started the current band with a high school friend playing the bass. Soon, Costin, lead singer in the former band I have just left joined us and after a while also the drummer. We have started it in an other direction, where we used to seek things. We were looking for more commercial music, we were trying to make our songs heard.

As compared to the previous experience, the way we compose things here is what I like to call “the normal one”: one of us comes with a song, plays it to the others, and if we feel it is right, we start working on it.

Sometimes, happened that lyrics were not quite the best, ok, so we can change them if you have a better idea! Sometimes, what initially was a ballad turned out to be played as a fast paced song. Sometimes, we only take a part of the song and come up with a different chorus. It works!

But in all these situations I think we follow without really thinking about it, a few things:

1. the voice part is the most important, not the guitar! (And that comes from a guitar player, OK?) If your voice needs a different guitar part, even if your riff is the most beautiful you have ever created, change the damn riff, people will finally listen to the voice, OK?
2. respect the original idea of the composer/song
3. collaborate, work together! I strongly believe that synergy is the best thing one can have. (Synergy is when the result of the band working together is better than summed results of individual players, there, I had to say it!). In such cases, there is no place for false pride. Working together brings out the best in each of the band members and I think that this way everybody will feel it brought something to the song, even if there is a credited composer for that particular song.

I don’t know why I wrote this post, I think I have just thought about it these last few days and I had to say it here.

Anyway, I think that for some of you, the first way of creating songs may sound strange, but I think that those playing metal will recognize themselves there. And also I think that there are people having musical education, reading notes very well, who will come up with a written down song, well…

By the way, how do you do it in your band?

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