Week 2: Your Perfect Pitch

Nine out of ten times, when I tell someone I'm a singer, the next words out of the person's mouth are"What kind of music?"  While this is by far the most difficult question for a musician to answer, without an answer, you look like a complete fool.  I know this first-hand.  I have been this fool.  This week's chapter, "Your Perfect Pitch" is THE most challenging because you have to look at yourself from a marketing perspective.  I find it incredibly difficult to see myself and my music from an outside point-of-view, which is why I enlisted help!

I fall into the category of being one of the luckiest people in the world because I have some of the best friends on the planet.  One of them is Nora Geiss, who works for a branding company in New York City.  Together, we sat down with some of her colleagues at Interbrand who had the graciousness to spend some time listening to my music and offering up ideas.  (Thank you Nora, Melinda, Jill, Cesar, Rachel and Lauryn).  We concluded that the songs on my new EP are dreamy, watery, introspective narratives that come from a place of strength and truth.  Out of this discussion, my genre "Dream Rock Songstress" was born.  It conveys that I'm a female solo artist who sings chilled out rock music, and also hints at a soulful sound.  I hope it also invokes a certain amount of curiosity.  At the suggestion of Ariel in "Music Success in Nine Weeks", I have this tag on my website, email signature, facebook page, myspace page, etc.

The next question people generally ask me is "well, who do you sound like?"  Oh man!  Another crazy difficult question!   I've argued with myself on the "sounds like" category a lot but I agree with Ariel that the ultimate goal for an emerging artist working on her pitch, is to simply pique curiosity and convey the general vibe of the music.  I usually have a few contemporary reference artists on hand like Neko Case, Fiona Apple, or Florence and the Machine, as well as a few older artists like Janis Joplin or Grace Slick.  Now, I don't deign to think that I sound exactly like Janis or Gracie, but I do share certain qualities like I have a bohemian style, a strong soulful voice, and I sing pop/rock music.

Although it has been a struggle coming up with my "pitch", with a little help from my friends, I can now confidently proclaim (in less than 15 seconds!) to any askers out there as a solo artist I sing soulful dream rock music reminiscent of Fiona Apple, Neko Case, or Janis Joplin, and I have a debut solo album coming out in September.