View RSS Feed

Shoden

A Little Something About My Band, Culloden

Rate this Entry
I write, I play bass and I sing for a band, a Heavy Metal band and it is called Culloden. Originally it was because no one else could do the job properly or would bother that I started singing and I've never been a good bass player, I've been inspired by bassists who play the bass like the guitar for crying out loud!
I've been plucking, bashing, shouting, screaming, chanting, forcing my way through the ranks of skill, you can say I've been grinding, a lot to reach a level I can face the next boss, the world of music itself!

With there being only 3 of us our sound is limited, our range is limited only to what I can sing and play, for covering songs its the same but I bite my tongue and change it, modify both elements and bend them to my will so I can. What has spawned from our unison though regardless of these limitations is a force so odd, yet entirely awesome and above the blackened seas of self pity.

Ladies and Gentlemen let me show you, the power of Culloden!!

Our first original is a fully recorded and mixed demo, it is called "The Void" originally the lyrics were inspired by how I felt when I was dumped 2, 2 and half years ago maybes and there are still remnants of the originally lyrical elements in the first section before the fast part kicks in but as time went on I worked on the lyrics more and it slowly became a story of its own, a story of a being trapped in a vast, empty, dark and cold prison between dimensions, The Void, for ten thousand years, cursing his fate, his sorrow and remorse became pure vengeance pure fury and madness and when he broke free, the world would burn by his hands and that is the story behind it, cliche but metal lyrics are full of cliches everywhere tbh.
We recorded this in D standard as at the time I was just starting to sing again after we booted a singer we had in because she just couldn't do the job. Now we play in Eb tuning and plan to redo the song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lawsI...-1sHtITDIxm1TQ

It was recorded live in one take.
We also recorded a Judas Priest cover of their most famous song, Breaking the Law, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5GVBuSyAFw

A Motorhead cover of The Ace of Spades http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9DKVXpZQuo
and a Manowar cover of Kings of Metal http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pwAK14vMIM

This was back in September and since we've began 2 more songs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOGE7BqkR6Y The Fall of Culloden (also called The Lost Children)

And March on the Somme http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYY8DRb8dj8


Worth linking too is a video of a really good, heavy, slow, grungy, groovy, crunchy and dark jam. Me and the drummer are adamant to use this! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRqadj9BecE

So there you have it! This is what I do, this is me, making and playing music with my friends and we hope to level up again and again and storm the barricades! This is Culloden, this is I Shoden.

Comments

  1. Yeargdribble's Avatar
    I know you probably didn't post looking for advice, but I can't help myself. You need to work on pitch matching and intonation with your voice. Even when screaming, many of the songs you're covering have very definite pitch and you're not quite making it. The one that sounded best was Ace of Spades just because it's probably one of the easier ones to do without being quite so pitch solid.

    The first cover you linked had you really exposed and there were honestly some pretty painful spots of intonation that made it sound sort of like an over-the-top portrayal of a bad metal band. It's almost a caricature of itself.

    You could work on your singing to remedy this if you have a good ear for pitch matching. I've known guys who basically scream scales and intervals to work on pitch matching with their scream voice. This would probably be a good idea for you.

    It sounds like you're hoping to do something big with your band, but there are some major issue to work through before you can think of being "discovered." Even then, it's unlikely. If you wanna make actual money playing an instrument, doing covers and doing a wider range of music is where you need to go. People honestly couldn't care less about original music. The sort of music people want to hear when they PAY for a live band is good, solid covers of music they are familiar with, and, in some cases, can dance to.

    Usually when people sit around, acting thoughtful, and writing lots of original stuff with their band, it eventually peters out. The thrill of playing in a "band" sours after a year or two for most as one or more members realize they are putting in rehearsal time for basically no return on their investment and doing it so that practically nobody can hear what they are doing.

    If you think living in the Youtube generation fixes this, it actually makes it worse. There's a ton of this stuff on Youtube and much of it significantly better. If you want to get noticed on Youtube, you've gotta be really impressive.

    I'm not sure what other advice I can offer, but I feel like it's necessary to throw out some food for thought as a guy who actually does make a living playing music and sees half a dozen bands of this caliber or higher every year begging for free space at exhibition style festivals thinking they will be discovered on their deep artistic merit.
  2. Shoden's Avatar
    Whey, Any tips are great and I have worked on this stuff since the recordings were done, we've changed tuning from D Standard to Eb which seems to have worked better, The Fall of Culloden and the Somme are in that tuning but also they're very recent videos, the recordings we did there were done late August/Early September time, I cannot believe its been so long but on the other hands its little time at all. I have little to say in self defence of my vocals, I just keep at it hoping for the best and not letting what seems like picking but is actually constructive, helpful criticism which can help me improve if I do as much as simply listen to it, get to me so much.
    So yeah, thanks for that, don't mean that in a robotic, got to be nice, someone replied type of way but I actually mean it, cheers.
    I agree that the youtube generation has made things worse, the whole internet thing, point and click mannerisms has made people lazy, you have to be lucky to even get the slightest bit of attention and when you do its not that much.
    The world of music and videos, is there, everywhere, right before your eyes and ears and the simple click can get it but there's no way to distinguish what's what, there's no way to literally find a specific kind of band without a bit of luck or hours of flicking through videos. I can envision it from the perspectives of a music listener and a music maker, its tough when you don't have specific information.

    My hopes are that of a hopeless dreamer, constant optimism, but we've all settled on just having a small following on a local scale for our original material, realistically thinking, its not like any band can be the next Black Sabbath unless they are incredible but even if they are, how are they found?
    Here in the North East of England there's a very well fed, well embraced music scene, this was one of the key locations where the New Wave of British Heavy Metal in the early 80s popped up, bands like Venom, Blitzkrieg, Fist, Hollow Ground, Satan, Blind Fury and Tygers of Pan Tang came from this neck of the woods. I know some of these people on a personal, pop in the pub have a chat, type of scale, nothing really braggable about I know but the stories they've told me are all the same, they just kept going, writing and playing for fun without wanting to make it big and be a rockstar around the world. Dreams are good to have, ambition is good but at the end of the day, the whole band thing should be enjoyed. The 3 of us have sat down time and time again discussing about progress, we've split up a few times and keep coming back together so we're just, going to do it for the sake of having fun trying. There's playing opportunities in this area of course but we do have hard work to do if we want to get at least something. How many other bands are there around the country, around the world, in our position with our abilities wanting to make it big? too many to count, I've seen it happen though, local friends of mine get slots in the likes of Bloodstock, supporting big bands, they're all a few more years down the line than we are by about 4-5 years but my point is, its not impossible to make a smallscale local breakthrough but it takes work, effort and commitment,
  3. Shoden's Avatar
    Oops double post. XD
  4. Yeargdribble's Avatar
    It's good to hear that you guys have such a good and positive attitude about it. Just keep working at it. While there are huge improvements to be made all around, there are also good things happening which I should've mentioned in my previous post. Keep working and you never know. At least you're realistic about the whole thing.
  5. Shoden's Avatar
    Yeps and once again, seriously, cheers for the feedback. All things require effort, I've spent most of the day listening back on all our stuff and videos from the very earliest of days, we record jams or rehearsals often, not just for our friends to see but to look back on and see what needs improving. We got a battle of the bands coming up soon though so we're grinding our lazy backsides into gear to prepare. Even if we stand little chance XD