so, I expected that with an exercise like this, I would have walked away thinking that drummers actually contribute more to songwriting than I normally credit them for, but I think that after hearing the diversity of the submissions, it's actually had the opposite effect on me.
I always cut the drummer in on writing credit if they are in the room playing while I'm writing, 'cause I do consider it a collaborative process, and I think that I wouldn't be making the choices that I'm making if I wasn't playing with the drummer at that moment. I'll tweak and finish without their participation, but if they were around at the inception of the tune, they always get credit from me. This of course differs from walking into the rehearsal room with completed melody lyrics & chord progressions which imply bass lines and drum arrangements...
so...when you're working with established drum tracks which imply a rhythmic base for the song, but leave you open with regard to melody, lyrics, and chord and song structures...where does that leave the drummer as a writer...? If you strip the drums away, you have 4 totally different songs in this case, I wouldn't suspect that any of them originated from the same drum tracks...and yet they did.
though purely academic at this point, it would be interesting if the the drummer is not a writer on the original recording his tracks were taken from and ends up being one on all of these submissions. Ethically I'd cut him in, but I wouldn't expect everybody to agree with me about the degree of the drummer's participation in creation of the song...If a song ultimately breaks down to melody and lyrics, where does the drummer fit in as a writer if he/she doesn't participate in those areas...? I find this to be a grey area even after having spent 5 years doing music publishing professionally in the early to mid 90s.
sorry for the left turn regarding intellectual property rights, but I think it's related to the thread and interesting...
