Discuss your past attemps on making a band, and tell us why they fail!



I have had a few friends who are musicians and tried creating bands with others, in the end theres always some reason why bands fail.

I have had a few bands myself that I tried putting together and they fail.

My first band I got into, I never knew much about genre names and whatnot, that rock was rock and metal was metal. The other guitarist in the band was into emo music, and found guitar solo's to be a waste of time (in which I did not take lightly). Our drummer could care less about anything, all he wanted to do was drum (even though he didnt even own a drumset). Eventually that band died, I forget why though lol.

I joined this other band called Irea, latin for Wrath. This time we had a full band going on. The problem was it seemed only I and the vocalist were dedicated, the bassist was hung up in his girlfriend and would never have time to practice, and we could never get a hold of our drummer. Eventually our vocalist decided to call it quits, it sucked though too because he had a little recording studio in his basement.

I tried making a few other bands, had different names for them too, and they all failed. Why? Because my area sucks for metal, nobody is dedicated to anything! Vocalists were too rare, guitarists were all too hung up in emo music and metalcore, drummers were careless and were incredibly hard to get a hold of, and bassists are nowhere to be found!

Recently I had a band called ATRATUS in which we are still trying to put together. So far its me and my bud Seth as the guitarists, and our other friend Mike as vocals, we are all Death Metal fans. It was Mike and I that basically founded it. I had everything put together, I even showed everyone Suffocation and Death to see if they like that style of music and they said yes.

I could never get a hold of our drummer, he never replied on MSN, I did not know his phone number either. Him and I play in a church band and when I spoke to him of the band he never seemed to care, he would even walk away while I was talking to him! Eventually whenever I would try to get together he would claim to have "tenis" practice every single day. So I asked him if he just wants to quit and he said yes.

Our bassist was just lazy, I showed him a shitlaod of Death and he loved it. I could never get a hold of him either, I sent him messages on myspace, and I would even call him and he wouldnt answer. Eventually I found him in his girlfriends car and followed him, he said he was too tired to reply (which is complete bullshit) and that he doesnt want to be in the band anymore which would of been nice to know in the first place! He claimed that death metal was too hard for him and he wasnt that interested in it anyway.

In June our guitarist Seth is moving to Florida and we are based in Northern Ohio. And Mike got busted for having a party at his house and his grandparents dont trust anyone over, his basement was our practice spot.

So I am glad that I found a vocalist who is ok with Death Metal vocals, if he can practice outward growls he could sound like Fank Mullen I bet. But hopefully I can make this band successful!

i have some friends with bands and that have made attempts to create another band with other members but in the end they fail either because of their different intersts on what genre or style to play, or also sometimes due to personal differences.

some of them have their band settled and they're about to realease their fisrt well recordered and produced album, but in the past their guitarist tried to form aother band but failes because of the reason i stated. also, something that has happened is lack of commitment beacuse some of the members that he got for the new band were also members of other 2 bands or something, so they didn't have time to rehearse or dedicate to the band properly.

Ah, this is a long and torturous history for me. For similar reasons to you, TJ, I have had pretty bad luck trying to from bands and keep them together. The thing is this; my area sucks, and I mean SUCKS when it comes to local musicians. The only thing anyone around here wants to play is hardcore or emo, or in some cases (thankfully) punk. But there is nobody in this town that wants to play metal and be dedicated to it.

However, part of the reason why I first got into metal was because I wanted to play in a band, and I knew a drummer who was a metalhead, he used to be one of my good friends, and through our attempts at a band together, we got even closer. He introduced me to my early experiences of metal, and it's becuase of him the Megadeth, Iron Maiden, and Shadows Fall are such large passions of mine; they were the first metal bands I was ever really heavy into. But he was also a prog addict, and I so I too became highly apreciative of dream theater. But the thing was, we were like, the only two people in town who really wanted to play metal. I remember trying to recruit this one guy as a guitarist, he claimed to be into all kinds of good death metal bands like morbid angel and shit, and he also made the ridiculous claim that he was the best guitarist in the city. Well, even though I knew that second part to be bullshit, I still invited him to a rehearsal to work on covering Aces High.....he never showed up, and then gave me some bullshit excuses, I didn't care, I dismissed him. Then there were some other kids who just seemed half hearted in their efforts, or just weren't up to par with the playing. Also, as far as the writing process went, the drummer and I had clashing ideas, and well as flaws. he would mess around too much in his playing, and wanted to do too many flashy things that just sort of messed up the Rhythm. As for myself, well, I was still too simplistic a musician to be able to play most solos well, and so I mostly just wrote out thrash rhythms. Eventually because of the lack of other intrested musicians, the clash of creativity, and my (at the period of time) simplicity as a musician, we just sort of broke it up.

Later, I tried to do a one man band thing, and went to one of my family friends' basement studio's to start recording my ideas for my first album. I only ever got one song recorded, and he shut down his studio for financial reasons......well, that sucked. I was about sixteen at the time. I remember the song I had recorded had an old school judas priest feel to it. I still have the origional copy, and I also sent a copy to good ol' Daru Jericho when she was still around.

Then me and the drummer that I had known for a while tried a few other attempts to get together again, but he was too hung up in his girlfriend and was blowing off practices, and JUST as we'd found a worthwhile bass player.....DAMNIT! So, I decided from that point on, I was done with him
Well, guess what? I wasn't done with him yet...I still had one last thing to go through. He had broken up with his girlfriend, and he'd come to me, asking me to play lead guitars for this local punk band he had played in that had fallen to shit, and it was just him and this one other kid left. I was like "Well, okay" and I started practicing with them. They had me solo over certain riffs they'd already written. The plan was to play a local show together, and maybe change our sound from there. I was like "I want to play metal" and they were like "okay, maybe." but then the day of the show, they played it without me. I was PISSED!!! So from that point on I resolved; no more bands till college.

So, that's my story.

No one else has had similar experiences?

For me, I've never held any real expectations for the musicians I played with in the past in terms of being established as a band. Sure, it would be nice to have our names known to other people, but the most important thing is to enjoy yourself in the process of playing together, not that I'm implying that the posters here weren't initially planning to do so with their own band, but for me, some of the things that make a band work better together is letting ideas flow and not being bent on playing what other people want to hear or what they specifically want to hear.

Of course, sometimes a band works better when one person takes initiative and essentially leads the band into creating ideas for music based on their vision, so it all depends. In essence, cooperation is the key to creating a band having all the members undivided attention.

With that said, I've had a few groups in the last few years, but I wouldn't call those failures. Because I ultimately did what I wanted to do in the band, is to play for my own experience and to satisfy my own need to express myself. Some might say that they were failures, but it's not like we had any real goal to impress anyone else but ourselves.

It also helps to play with musicians who are open minded or are flexible to adding to an idea proposed by the band without letting their motives ruin everyone elses time.

So here's my story.

About three years ago i was still in high-school when a couple of friends of mine started a band. They had just aquired their instruments and decided that they didn't need lessons but that they could just start right away. They covered stuff like "Seven Nation Army" from The White Stripes and "Enter Sandman" from, well, you know...
So we went to one of their live shows(their 1st i think) held in the school hall. Needles to say there weren't too many people that showed up, still, when i saw them playing on that stage i was like "wow, that's what i have to do with my life!", even though they sucked ass!

So myself and a couple of friends each bought different instruments and without lessons we attempted our own band. As you might imagine, it was really lame but man did we enjoy playing those "System of a Down" covers!
Along the way we changed lots of members, me being the only permanent one of course.
Early last year we bought some studio time and that's when i found out that our singer didn't exactly posses as many octaves as, say, Mariah Carey! Ha ha! Anyway, it seemed like i was putting more effort into the band than any of the other members, so after that shocking demo we decided to call it quits.
Still, i have some good memories of playing at like local house parties and stuff!

Now, i'm jamming with this dude, he plays guitar, and we just recruited another guitarist and a bassist so we'll see what happens with this project!

I think the key to not failing is EQUAL comittment from ALL the members and just enjoying yourself playing the songs.
I didn't expect anything from this current project and allready it sounds a million times better than my previous bands.

My first band was between me (on guitar) and another Doushe Bag (Who will be known as Doushe Bag),on another guitar. So I showed him some stuff I wrote, (more rock style than Metal) and his first impression was that I was god. So I kept writing songs, and he kept.... doing nothing whatsoever.

Eventually he realised that he sucked at guitar, so he switched to bass, while I was slowly getting better at my songwriting. He soon tried writing bass for my songs, but I didn't have the heart to tell him that his bass SUCKED. He soon realized on his own, and decided to switch to vocals. Which he also sucked at.

By this time I was fully into Metal, and my writing was at it's best, and he still.... sucked. So I just kind of stopped talking to him (BTW: This guy was a complete dick to everybody). By this time we had gone through about 4 other members that left because we weren't going anywhere, and we had had a total of zero practices.

So eventually we got this bassist known as "Bubs", and we are both completely dedicated. So we form our own band away from Doushe Bag, and call it "Death From The Water" (terrible name, I know). Eventually we stopped hanging out with him (even though he still thought he was in our band, now playing drums.... even though he has never played drums in his life, and doesn't own a drum kit).

Soon enough we found another Guitarist by the name of Blake (amasing guitarist). And thus "Haight" was formed (pronounced Hate). So now we had someone good enough to practice with. Later we ran into a vocalist by the name of Kevin (Growler), and he introduced us to his cousin, Sara, who played drums.

So now we finally have a full band, and I think that Doushe Bag finally realises that he is not one of us (BTW: He went back to guitar again).

And so is the story of HAIGHT, the greatest band on earth.

My first band (hardly) was called something a long the lines of 'space weasels of hell' and our genre was 'porno groove progressive stoner thrash'. Quite a barrel of laughs we were.

Written by Sunioj on 02.05.2008 at 21:46

My first band (hardly) was called something a long the lines of 'space weasels of hell' and our genre was 'porno groove progressive stoner thrash'. Quite a barrel of laughs we were.

Ok but how did this band fail? (point of the thread was to discuss why your bands failed)

Oh dude i've been in this experience a LOT of times, but still in the line.

The first time the bands i've been broke is because the guys doesn't have the tima (And the guts) to practice or to play, you can't go with people like this, you must fire them. Actually best friends are not the best musicians.

Written by Lord TJ on 03.05.2008 at 06:05

Written by Sunioj on 02.05.2008 at 21:46

My first band (hardly) was called something a long the lines of 'space weasels of hell' and our genre was 'porno groove progressive stoner thrash'. Quite a barrel of laughs we were.

Ok but how did this band fail? (point of the thread was to discuss why your bands failed)

Non commitment and no musical experience, basically.

I have had a couple myself, if you can even consider them bands.

My buddy Steev and I grew up on metal together, we've known each other for about 13 years now but when we were in school we really wanted to start a band because music was all that mattered in life. It must have been in 2000 that I got my first guitar, a decent Ibanez with dual humbuckers and Steev got a bass..I don't recall what is was now. But we knew two other guys that were about a year younger than us and tried to start a band, mind you the other two guys also played guitar and bass....needless to say we never jammed, and it was just my buddy and I that came up with a band name, logo and some lyrics. It failed because we never jammed, nor could the two of us play well.

Second "band". Another attempt with my buddy Steev in 2001, and we had a mutual friend who was actually decent on guitar and decided that we would give the band thing a shot again. We had a few practices, I ended up being just the vocalist while they did guitar and bass, and we learned a few cover songs like Nirvana and Sepultura, ah I don't recall what else. We had a spot at a local Rec Center, there were drummers and some decent equipment there, as well as other musicians of course.. I ended up not going because the guy that hosted the thing was a Christian death metal drummer that use to listen to Venom and Bathory. That was the end of that so called band, the reason for failing is we still didn't know shit, and I didn't want any part of playing at a Christian Rec Center.
----

Now Steev has a top end B.C. Rich Warlock bass, and a hell of a nice amp/cab set-up that he's invested probably $7000 into and we live in differant countries now.
Whereas I have a complete studio set-up with a few guitars, amps, bass, six piece drumset (about 10+ cymbals) and the guy I have a band with now rarely comes over anymore. My current bandmate Mikael is fairly talented on guitar, he's got some technical know how and ability, but he's almost always broke (yet he just picked up a Jackson dinky recently), dealing with legal issues, working or messing around with his newest girlfriend of the time.

Written by Sunioj on 02.05.2008 at 21:46

My first band (hardly) was called something a long the lines of 'space weasels of hell' and our genre was 'porno groove progressive stoner thrash'. Quite a barrel of laughs we were.

We were gonna call ourselves Ragnarock, but it turns out there's already been like a billion bands with that name, and so we just sort of were nameless till we broke up.

Hm well.. my first band was called krakatoa we played music like sun o)). almost. there was only 2 of us me and chris, we bothe played keyboards drums and bass. at diffrent times, we would switch everynow and again, both of us could play all the other instruments. we played a few gigs but in the end cris had to move to america, bugger end of band.

i did try to form a band recently called extinct, playing ensiferumesque metal. with a female/male vocalist thing going on like battlelore. i have songs written etc and other muscians to play it, then my vocalist goes off to join some lame nightwish/within temptaion etc cover band and eveyone elses says their too busy. so i gave up. if getting people intereste in playing origanl material and commitng to it is this anoyng i may as well just give up.

so i did.

i want my old band back.

Written by necrovamp on 28.10.2008 at 02:00

Hm well.. my first band was called krakatoa we played music like sun o)). almost. there was only 2 of us me and chris, we bothe played keyboards drums and bass. at diffrent times, we would switch everynow and again, both of us could play all the other instruments. we played a few gigs but in the end cris had to move to america, bugger end of band.

i did try to form a band recently called extinct, playing ensiferumesque metal. with a female/male vocalist thing going on like battlelore. i have songs written etc and other muscians to play it, then my vocalist goes off to join some lame nightwish/within temptaion etc cover band and eveyone elses says their too busy. so i gave up. if getting people intereste in playing origanl material and commitng to it is this anoyng i may as well just give up.

so i did.

i want my old band back.

Eh, you'll find someone that's dedicated man, it's all just a matter of patience and having the will to actively seek out people who are willing to show up to regular practices. I mean, Steve Harris went through like, a billion people before he could find anyone he could play with seriously.

Written by Arian Totalis on 03.11.2008 at 04:54

Written by necrovamp on 28.10.2008 at 02:00

Hm well.. my first band was called krakatoa we played music like sun o)). almost. there was only 2 of us me and chris, we bothe played keyboards drums and bass. at diffrent times, we would switch everynow and again, both of us could play all the other instruments. we played a few gigs but in the end cris had to move to america, bugger end of band.

i did try to form a band recently called extinct, playing ensiferumesque metal. with a female/male vocalist thing going on like battlelore. i have songs written etc and other muscians to play it, then my vocalist goes off to join some lame nightwish/within temptaion etc cover band and eveyone elses says their too busy. so i gave up. if getting people intereste in playing origanl material and commitng to it is this anoyng i may as well just give up.

so i did.

i want my old band back.

Eh, you'll find someone that's dedicated man, it's all just a matter of patience and having the will to actively seek out people who are willing to show up to regular practices. I mean, Steve Harris went through like, a billion people before he could find anyone he could play with seriously.

i see you point dude, im not giving up im just waiting to find the right people now. however now i find its me who doesnt have the time now! ironic.

If you are as jaded as me, you should just go solo.

Actually I have a band now, so I shouldn't be talking lol.

Well actually am playing in a band.. But i have a story to tell... I started a rock band in my little village were there was only o lot failing attempts to make a band and keep it together.. Well its simple... i live in fucking country called sfax (SFUCKS) were everyone who start making two little chords becomes a super guitar hero... No one is dedicated to the hard work to do metal for metal... In my village people make shitty crap only to show up... Its the fucking hell!!! Watever... I'll make it easy for you... Finally i became the enemy of every body in my village... I mean how could you people stand someone undedicated to his music... Watever... My new band is coming from the ashes and rising with the heat and fire that will burn them all from the inside out !!!! BETRAYERS OF MUSIC !!!

My first band was called Comrades of Metal which we put together originally before I knew how to play guitar. because of this I learned to death growl then since I couldn't sing. Our drummer was a huge stoner and would complain halfway through any song because he needed a smoke. Our Bassist who i am actually still really good friends with and in a band with knew about as much about the bass as I did at the time. Our guitarist sucked and we eventually got a new guitarist who was actually talented but he wanted to write stuff like the Red Hot Chili peppers so our genres clashed. Me and my Bassist have always stuck together ever since.

I've been in 3 bands so far, several years difference in between one another. In my 1st one we played only cover songs (I was the singer) from GNR, Poison, Iron Miaden, Judas Priest, etc. It worked for almost a year but then I decided to leave due to musical differences. 2nd one we played for more than 3 years, original songs mostly (I played guitar this time) and it worked I beleieve due to the commitment we all had with the band. At the end it seemed like some of the guys were kind of worked out from constant gigging (it was their first time in a band and were not used to all the hassle and continuos rehearsals). We parted ways but we're still good friends.
3rd and current band: all original songs, been through several singers out of which none had the commitment nor the will to dedicate it's proper space and time to the band , so the bass player and I (guitar) took on singing duties simultaneously with the guitar playing .
Bottom line: commitment is the key to succed in anything, you have to like and feel comfortable with what you are doing and with the people around you, otherwise you'll end up leaving.
To the guys that are having a hard time putting a band together: don't give up, keep trying, soon you'll find the right people and/or they'll find you.

For me it has been a combination of the following things:
- Lack of dedication
- Musical differences that always come up during writing and/or recording
- Close-mindedness and complete lack of flexibility
- Rather be sitting on Facebook or playing Xbox than meeting up or even actually playing their respective instruments
- Apparent lack of time or always busy (see previous point)
- General lack of creativity - unprepared to share the workload equally

The thing that pisses me of is this idea that if one guy in the band doesn't like harsh vocals, we shouldn't have harsh vocals at all. This is how it was in the past and everything ends up falling apart anyway. Even when I, personally am sick of being ridiculously flexible to the point where nobody appreciates anything and the minority are expected to come up with a majority of the material. A couple of the other guys I played with some time ago listen to about 10 to 20 bands between them in total. Link Park don't musically inspire a whole lot, as it turns out.

I'll admit that out of the guys I've played with in the recent months, I've had the worst gear of them all. But when it comes to musicianship, flexibility, perseverance and general love of music - well we're in a whole different league.

I've accepted that I will never understand the point of owning a $3000+ guitar and a few grand in other gear when we meet (as a band) 5 times in a year and the only thing that is ever played on said guitar are power chords and LP-inspired riffs.

/rant over

I guess ADIresiduos ^ makes a good point, the key is to not give up. Push through until you've found the people you "just click" with and can trust.