Bit of background.
I've been in this band for a little over two years now. When I joined, they had a few songs written but they ended up discarding all but one of them. In the time since then, they wrote another five with me contributing. The way it works is the guitarist composes the music and the singer writes the lyrics. I fit in between, contributing a couple of riffs and an additional verse or chorus or middle eight to the words.
Unfortunately, the three of us aren't on the same page when it comes to crucial decisions. The guitarist and I want to record our songs as high quality home demos and release them. Both of us also work quickly and aren't particularly fond of making too many changes to our songs. If something sounds good, it's enough for us. We don't feel the need to iterate endlessly in the hope that "something better" may come up. On the other hand, the singer comes with a number of hangups from his previous band. They did a release of their home demos that was not well done and they even made up the artwork just a couple of hours before the release. Nothing was recorded or mixed properly so the end result was bad. Because of this, the singer has insisted that the only way he'll agree to a release is if we go into a studio, do proper recordings, and get it mixed and mastered by pros.
Obviously, this will cost a lot of money. One of the issues is that so far, we are lacking a drummer and keys player so we haven't even played live since I joined. The demos have been done with the help of drum programming and me playing keys. Hence there has been no income from the band. We'd have to invest our own money from our day jobs. Not just that, he has refused to even play cover gigs to make money because he's afraid we'd be branded as a cover band. He's also taken ages to complete the lyrics. In fact, the guitarist and I were done around six months ago and have mostly spent the interim waiting for him to get done. This didn't stop him from asking us to endlessly rework parts in the songs. Both of us are burnt out on the whole process and I for one have sworn that I will never contribute any of my ideas to the band again. It also doesn't help that neither the guitarist nor I like arguments and since the singer is pushy, he usually wins by default. As the guitarist likes to say, he enjoys a one-third majority.
The guitarist and I agreed that this cannot go on and since the two of us enjoy working together, we are planning to move forward. All was fine and dandy till yesterday when the guitarist was speaking to a potential singer who refused to perform our songs because she felt it was unfair to the current singer. He called me up and told me he felt what we were doing was morally wrong. I told him outright that the best case scenario was that the singer would agree to release our home demos and then we'd go our separate ways because I could not work with him any more. I made it very clear that I was going to quit. It was just a matter of time. The fact of the matter is I'm so mad right now that I have half a mind to dump the guitarist as well and strike out on my own.
We have had extensive discussions between the two of us on how to handle the situation. The way I see it, he and I composed all the music so it is only fair for us to perform it considering we created it. The lyrics don't belong to us completely so I feel it is fair to perform the songs with the same music but changing the lyrics. What do you guys think? I am sure that I won't be staying in the band for much longer but is it worth it to try convincing the guitarist to join me? He's definitely worth keeping around. His main problem is that he cares too much what other people think which is why this sudden change of heart came about.
I've been in this band for a little over two years now. When I joined, they had a few songs written but they ended up discarding all but one of them. In the time since then, they wrote another five with me contributing. The way it works is the guitarist composes the music and the singer writes the lyrics. I fit in between, contributing a couple of riffs and an additional verse or chorus or middle eight to the words.
Unfortunately, the three of us aren't on the same page when it comes to crucial decisions. The guitarist and I want to record our songs as high quality home demos and release them. Both of us also work quickly and aren't particularly fond of making too many changes to our songs. If something sounds good, it's enough for us. We don't feel the need to iterate endlessly in the hope that "something better" may come up. On the other hand, the singer comes with a number of hangups from his previous band. They did a release of their home demos that was not well done and they even made up the artwork just a couple of hours before the release. Nothing was recorded or mixed properly so the end result was bad. Because of this, the singer has insisted that the only way he'll agree to a release is if we go into a studio, do proper recordings, and get it mixed and mastered by pros.
Obviously, this will cost a lot of money. One of the issues is that so far, we are lacking a drummer and keys player so we haven't even played live since I joined. The demos have been done with the help of drum programming and me playing keys. Hence there has been no income from the band. We'd have to invest our own money from our day jobs. Not just that, he has refused to even play cover gigs to make money because he's afraid we'd be branded as a cover band. He's also taken ages to complete the lyrics. In fact, the guitarist and I were done around six months ago and have mostly spent the interim waiting for him to get done. This didn't stop him from asking us to endlessly rework parts in the songs. Both of us are burnt out on the whole process and I for one have sworn that I will never contribute any of my ideas to the band again. It also doesn't help that neither the guitarist nor I like arguments and since the singer is pushy, he usually wins by default. As the guitarist likes to say, he enjoys a one-third majority.
The guitarist and I agreed that this cannot go on and since the two of us enjoy working together, we are planning to move forward. All was fine and dandy till yesterday when the guitarist was speaking to a potential singer who refused to perform our songs because she felt it was unfair to the current singer. He called me up and told me he felt what we were doing was morally wrong. I told him outright that the best case scenario was that the singer would agree to release our home demos and then we'd go our separate ways because I could not work with him any more. I made it very clear that I was going to quit. It was just a matter of time. The fact of the matter is I'm so mad right now that I have half a mind to dump the guitarist as well and strike out on my own.
We have had extensive discussions between the two of us on how to handle the situation. The way I see it, he and I composed all the music so it is only fair for us to perform it considering we created it. The lyrics don't belong to us completely so I feel it is fair to perform the songs with the same music but changing the lyrics. What do you guys think? I am sure that I won't be staying in the band for much longer but is it worth it to try convincing the guitarist to join me? He's definitely worth keeping around. His main problem is that he cares too much what other people think which is why this sudden change of heart came about.
