Attn Michael - 15yrs ...11 weeks & 3 days...

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cosmicdolphin
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Attn Michael - 15yrs ...11 weeks & 3 days...

Post by cosmicdolphin » Fri Apr 22, 2016 1:51 am

Last week a musician friend of mine sent me a text to say there was a guy mentioned in Michael's latest email about having had Taxi info some 15 years ago, lurking around and never taking action until now. I think he was half joking but he said it sounded like me.

I checked...it was me ! Thanks Michael :oops:

To be fair, back in those days I felt I was nowhere near to the bar in terms of what Taxi needed. I'm not a strong singer and the types of songs I tend to write aren't what generally is being asked for. Hiring singers wasn't a realistic option for me and music was just a part time hobby. I spent 8 years making an album ( ! ) of my own material which I put out in 2011 and I'm still working on the follow up. I think I sold about 12 copies.

Then a few things happened. I love mixing so I entered a mixing competition and although I didn't win I got some good feedback from Mike Senior of Sound on Sound so I decided to improve my mix skills some more and did follow up critiques with him over a couple of years until I got to the point where he said it " was in spitting distance of a commercial release "..with the exception of my vocals !

Next I got singing lessons and after a year I realised I'm probably not ever going to sound good enough to perform for these song pitches myself unless they want Bernard Sumner circa 1988 and I'm yet to see THAT listing.

Around the same time I mixed a bunch of showreel instrumentals for one of my oldest friends, he's traveled the world performing cover songs in bars , clubs , cruise ships and corporate gigs and wanted to get into it after finding out one of the kids who grew up on our street now owns a music production company in Malaysia with a complex of 7 studios and some massive clients.

Also Michael had been talking a lot lately on Taxi TV about this growing demand for instrumental cues so I started listening to the stuff people were getting forwarded and also to TV shows I watched and instead of thinking ( as I did with the songs referenced in the listings ) that it wasn't achievable I thought " Actually...I can do that "

What also helped is my kids are now older and they don't mind if Dad is in the garage writing music whilst they are doing their teenage things. So my mate and I we joined Taxi as a writing team, I'm more of a mix/electronica guy and Dale is more of a guitar guy so we work well together and have different skillsets that compliment each other.

The main reason for my post though is this, yesterday a Library in LA got in touch and want to sign one of our forwards. So it has taken 15 years of thinking about it, and only 11 weeks and 3 days to have someone in the industry want to sign something from us.

So Michael, if you are out there..thank you. I know you may think I'm crazy for waiting this long to take the plunge but I think I did the right thing for myself, I hate to suck at things and if I had of joined back then I know I wouldn't be submitting material anything like as good as now and would most likely have quit. I'm 46 now so I hope to have another good 20 years at this.

For the record it's 8 forwards in those 11 weeks from 19 submissions that we've heard back from so far with another 10 pending. That's around 40% forward rate.

I can't describe the feeling of reading that email...25 years of messing around with music and computers and now this ! :D

Mark

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Re: Attn Michael - 15yrs ...11 weeks & 3 days...

Post by andygabrys » Fri Apr 22, 2016 1:41 pm

Congrats!!

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Re: Attn Michael - 15yrs ...11 weeks & 3 days...

Post by cosmicdolphin » Fri Apr 22, 2016 2:11 pm

andygabrys wrote:Congrats!!
Thanks ..and another forward today ! 6 out of 10 for March submissions :shock:

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Re: Attn Michael - 15yrs ...11 weeks & 3 days...

Post by JohnForster » Sat Apr 23, 2016 5:26 am

Thanks for going into detail. Inspiring story, Mark. It takes how long it takes!

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Re: Attn Michael - 15yrs ...11 weeks & 3 days...

Post by Paulie » Sat Apr 23, 2016 8:57 pm

Great story! Thanks for sharing.

So, now we need to update the New Member FAQ with the following:

Q: How long will it take to hear back from a library?
A: Could be up to 15 years.

:mrgreen:
Paul "yo paulie!" Croteau
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http://www.yopauliemusic.com | https://www.taxi.com/members/paulcroteau | https://youtube.com/@yopauliemusic


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Re: Attn Michael - 15yrs ...11 weeks & 3 days...

Post by burpo » Sun Apr 24, 2016 4:22 am

Thanks for posting this.

I love hearing the details of each person's story, seeing that we all really do come from different
yet relatable places.
burpo
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Re: Attn Michael - 15yrs ...11 weeks & 3 days...

Post by sansharbour » Mon Apr 25, 2016 1:57 am

Great Story Mark

It's good for everyone to see this
You gave them what they wanted

Don

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Re: Attn Michael - 15yrs ...11 weeks & 3 days...

Post by Russell Landwehr » Mon Apr 25, 2016 5:06 am

:D good goin there, Mark :D
Multi-Genre Composer and Producer of TV and Film music Providing Easy to Use Cues for Every Scene

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Re: Attn Michael - 15yrs ...11 weeks & 3 days...

Post by DanLuedke » Mon Apr 25, 2016 9:13 pm

Great work, Mark and Dale! Thanks for sharing. It's a good reminder that there are often years of work honing one's craft before joining TAXI that enable success with TAXI. That said, Taxi is still a great way to accelerate one's progress.
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