Miranda – the band I’ve been in for the last 5 years, is finishing recording its second album. We’ve logged about 17 hours of recording and mixing over the last 4 months. The process has been relatively easy, as we definitely put the hours in to prepare ourselves. Whenever someone asks us, “So who/what do you sound like?”, I’m always dumbfounded. It’s like someone asking you what a 3 course meal at a fancy restaurant tasted like. Of course there are a lot of adjectives you could use, but you want to be brief and sum up the experience for the other person. Like how the appetizer was presented, all the textures involved with the actual taste, and so on with the main course and dessert as well. So when you’ve written 12 songs, that touch on many different genres of music, it can be difficult to sum up “our sound” in a few sentences. It’s like I don’t want to sell ourselves short by just saying we sound like band A, B, C, or D. But describing music in general is often tedious and always less than satisfactory.
My other musical project at the moment is a cover band. Well it’s just the two of us, playing acoustic guitars and singing. It’s been really enjoyable over the last couple months, just learning new songs and stretching my vocal range. We have about 40 songs that we want to end up learning, so I can’t wait to see where we end up with playing out live. Plus there’s the promise of getting paid! Which is a definite perk, but I realize I’d be playing these cover tunes at my place or with friends either way, so the pay is just an added benefit.
Sam Francis 