The Definition of "Contemporary"

[Freakwichtel]

Hey fellow writers,

got a return on the contemporary piano listing with this song "Sunday morning" on my taxi-site.

www.taxi.com/jochenwingerter

Critique was "This is a little more new-age than the contemporary style requested. Off-target"

So, this was the last thing, I really thought about this song, but I really want to improve my songwriting and know more about the targets of the listing.
Listened to some forwarded songs for this listing and they sound more spherical and in my opinion more with new-age-attitude than mine...

What is meant with contemporary today? I could really think of John Legend or so singing over my instrumental without any problem....

How do you define a song as contemporary?

[hummingbird]

Hey Jochen, I can't really answer your question, but I wanted to say I think your track is lovely. I'd call it positive, uplifting. Gj.

[Kolstad]

It's a slippery concept for sure.

Here are some ideas from Robin Frederick (Head of Taxi screeners):
http://robinfrederick.com/how-to-write- ... temporary/

[BenjaminDerclaye]

Had the same thing today where my sounds, instrumentation and structure was not contemporary enough. However they were all exactly the same as ALL references they gave.
I don't mind having songs returned if at least I can learn something out of the critique, which isn't really the case with this one.

[andygabrys]

Why not copy / paste the actual listing text into your original post - its hard to make a call if you don't see everything that was on the listing and I didn't submit to this one.

[Gypsygal]

Hey there Jochen. I am still struggling with learning the terms and how to work with them, but I think I realized something while listening to your track, and reading the Robin Frederick article on contemporary music.

If "contemporary" means basically/generally what you'd hear on the radio, or current trends, etc. then I think the only thing with your track that made it fall a little outside those lines was your use of rubato. Rubato is not generally used anywhere in contemporary music, or rarely anyways, probably because most music today is quantized, electronic, beat driven, etc. - i could be way off track here, but it did occur
to me maybe that was the only thing, because you are right, it had all the characteristics asked for, apart from that one as far as I could tell.

Just for what's it worth.
Cheers, diane