This week the band and I have been looking at Ariel’s' chapter on the perfect pitch. However... before I talk about what we've learnt and what we are doing as a result of our learning I wanted to talk about some of the other stuff we got from Ariel and how we've already began to see changes as a result of working with Ariel’s learning.
I want to briefly talk about Twitter. One of the things Ariel suggests about Twitter is that as a tool for engaging people with the band a lot of artists go about using it in the wrong way and only post stuff occasionally which usually consists of - buy our record or come to this show tonight.
If you are going to get the most out of Twitter you have to remember that it's primary function is to work as a short burst social networking tool and if you want to connect to people you have to be willing to share more. Whilst we'd done this a little bit before reading Ariel’s stuff, I can't say we'd done it with any real plan. This week we've tried tweeting every day little snippets about what we've been up to that generally still have a band theme but tend to be more engaging that we would have otherwise tweeted, and.. We’ve begun to get feedback from people who are following us that we don't know - which to us is great progress. For example, we played a gig at our local pub on Saturday just for fun. The stage was in the pub garden, which meant that there was a small tree right in front of the stage (almost on the stage). During the gig a friend took a photo of me singing behind this tree and just after the gig I tweeted the picture with a quote 'ever played a gig with a tree on stage' and I got a response - a real connection with a fan that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise got :)
Any way onto to today’s learning. This week we've been looking at creating the perfect pitch. Now I have to say that as I write this is still work in progress and I’ll be taking Ariel up on her offer to review some of our ideas later in the week. What I wanted to say at this time is where we think we are at with creating a perfect pitch. IN other words how would you sell the band in one line?
For us the idea initially of comparing ourselves to other band was at first a little uncomfortable. Although if I’m honest lots of other people have already done that. Describing us as.
Comfortably familiar, yet uniquely different.
A great rock - pop band without a bass player (yes we don't use a bass player, it's not a crime!)
Keane with Balls.
Coldplay experimenting with HI-NRG in the Beatles potting shed
Piano led pop rock from these tipped chaps.
Deliriously draped in angst.
Certainly we are happy with all these pitches that others have already made about us and to deny that we are inspire and influenced by other bands would be ridiculous. Also it's very true that people need a hook to categorise you in their CD collection so comparison are very important. Just as an aside we often get people say you must get a bass player until we get them to listen with their eyes shut and they then say that you would think we had one and we then explain that the Doors didn’t; have a bass player and it didn't do them any harm!
Any way the pitch. It seems to us the pitch needs to sharply sum up the band but it also needs to link the band to other bands and enable people to feel they can understand the band very quickly. The pitch has to describe then band and make people want to find our more about the band at the same time. The pitch should be honest and true and slightly tempting. Hence - I’m going to be sending Ariel’s some ideas for review this week and reading chapter three at the same time.
Cheers
Zak
No comments:
Post a Comment