Contemporary Enough?

[Robertj64]

So I will say this, Mark. We are musicians and music is considered an art. We are not in the bloody Marine Corps. We do not need drill seargents here to
"TELL IT LIKE IT IS" with derogatory comments. We should be gentlemanly on here. We are not a brute lot ....we contribute to culture. As with all things in culture, we should be dignified.

Charming, and all very 'knight in shining armour' and high brow of you, but no. The point that you seem to be missing is that this is a commercial undertaking. The tracks we create are our products, and the listings we respond to are opportunities to market and capitalise on those products. In order to do so, these products need to meet varying standards. The point of peer review is to find out where these products do not meet the standards required for a specific opportunity (or in general), and then make the necessary adjustments before sending them off into the world. You might prefer more coddling and cuddling, but that is hardly efficient in achieving this goal. A statement like 'the melody could use a bit of work' may have wording that is more to your liking, but it does not convey the urgency required; especially in the case of this specific example, where the melody doesn't 'need some work', but is simply wildly insufficient.
If your goal is to contribute to the world of art and culture; good for you, but creating tension cues or drones seems an odd way to do that. If, however, your goal is to produce work that is commercially viable and suited for a listing, expect your products to be measured against what makes something commercially viable, and be told when this is not the case. If you don't like how somebody gives you (or someone else) this feedback, I've pointed out before that there is an option on the forum to ignore certain users.

You have completely misunderstood the thrusts of my arguments. Let me break down to you in a blunt way. In a professional work environment such as this forum, you should be conducting yourself in a professional manner. That means when someone brings their work on here, you accord them respect and deal with them in a non-derogatory manner. Offer the same feedback that needs to be heard without the vitriolic put-downs. It is disrespectful and it makes the person giving the feedback look like a dumb ape.

You almost conveyed your example in a respectful tone. The melody is "simply insufficient". It is simple, economical, doesn't sugarcoat but there is no demeaning attached.

Come on now. You mean to say you cannot rise to the "high brow" level without being uncouth? I like the Dutch (I am with a Dutch girl) so let me be very direct with you. I don't think much of your reply. It is just trying to justify treating someone and their work like crap. It is also old school, straight out of the last World War. Did we not learn anything since then. Aspire to be better and get your message across succinctly. You can do it....I know you can.

[cosmicdolphin]

Had to read the linked discussion all the way through. I was transfixed by the passion on both (all?) sides of the issue.

I could not open this link last night, I cannot open it now: Server not found.

Try the Google cache

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/s ... clnk&gl=uk

[JohnDroese]

I hear what you are saying Robert and agree that if there is a way to successfully get the results without being disrespectful that should be used but let's do a comparison of what is going on here ..... On one hand you have the Taxi screener who is getting paid $5.00 to listen to your track.... You don't know who that is, You don't know their background, You can't hear any of their work..... in fact they may not even be a songwriter or producer.... They could just be an old A&R guy from a time that has passed us by.... You don't know if they understand current equipment or recording techniques,You don't know if they listened to more than :30 seconds of your song (they didn't) what you do know is that they are told to be nice, That they have a financial interest in keeping you around sending in $5.00 a song, That they are sitting there shuffling through hundreds of songs trying to make a quick opinion.... On the other hand you have a guy like Mark and others here on the board they are getting paid nothing to give professional advice to the people on here trying to improve, They take the time to listen to the track (if they don't they usually put a comment like I skipped around or only heard the first half), There is no restrictions on how they can give feedback (They are not told to be nice) so they are giving a more honest opinion of feedback, You can see these guys work one listen and you should be able to tell if they know what they are talking about,

Quick story a friend of mine got feedback from a Taxi screener that said your melody is to busy maybe try and tone that down.....it was said all nice and vague I mean really does that advice really give clear direction on how to do that? So he kept sending me revisions of his track and I kept trying to follow the screeners approach and telling him No it's still to busy, maybe try this or that now after Two days wasted on a single instrumental cue he was frustrated and said John I don't know what to do so I said Jesus scrap the whole dman melody it's not right go in a simpler direction..... I wanted to tell him that from the beginning but I wanted to be nice..... He got mad not because of what I said....He said I just wasted two days on this stupid cue why didn't you say that in the beginning.....

At the end of the day we are each responsible for our own success, we each have the choice to put our stuff out there or not, to be open to negative feedback....or not, to try and get better at what we do or keep making the same mistakes over and over..... Mark has helped me improve my tracks and I one appreciate his no nonsense tell it like it is to the point approach.... I get something from it every time (I don't always agree) but it's better than these guys that use a lot of nice words to say nothing at all....

One thing Mark said that is so true is that the further you get in this business the thicker your skin gets comments like these are just another day in the office.... trust me library owners comments are more direct and mean... When I started out that kind of stuff made me mad once you learn that its not said in malice but to genuinely help and once you have this I am going to succeed what ever the cost attitude..... all that matters is putting music I Believe in into the world and finding my tribe that likes it,,,,,

Best of luck
John

[cosmicdolphin]

Here is your bedtime reading. Old but...still relevant

http://www.jpfolks.com/forum/ubbthreads ... ber=688675

Had to read the linked discussion all the way through. I was transfixed by the passion on both (all?) sides of the issue.

I think the crux of it for me was that many 'amatuers' can't objectively hear what their music sounds like compared to where the bar is, and according to that thread some never will be able to. It was interesting to read about the person who went from a very low bar to success over a period of six years iirc. But that's not the norm.

[Robertj64]

You have completely misunderstood the thrusts of my arguments. Let me break down to you in a blunt way. In a professional work environment such as this forum, you should be conducting yourself in a professional manner. That means when someone brings their work on here, you accord them respect and deal with them in a non-derogatory manner. Offer the same feedback that needs to be heard without the vitriolic put-downs. It is disrespectful and it makes the person giving the feedback look like a dumb ape.

You almost conveyed your example in a respectful tone. The melody is "simply insufficient". It is simple, economical, doesn't sugarcoat but there is no demeaning attached.

Come on now. You mean to say you cannot rise to the "high brow" level without being uncouth? I like the Dutch (I am with a Dutch girl) so let me be very direct with you. I don't think much of your reply. It is just trying to justify treating someone and their work like crap. It is also old school, straight out of the last World War. Did we not learn anything since then. Aspire to be better and get your message across succinctly. You can do it....I know you can.

Wow. There is so much wrong with this reply that it's hard to know where to even start. First of all, it's not a 'professional work environment'. It's a forum, with people. Whatever expectations you may have of how people should behave and whatever moral rules you set yourself, projecting these unto others and demanding that they obey them like this is simply insulting and arrogant.

Second of all, stop patronising me. 'Come on now' and 'You know I can'? Smeg off and take that attitude to someone who believes they deserve it.

Third, stop making assumptions on who I am or what I'm like. It's simply offending, and your generalization about the Dutch is way off the mark. I normally tend to give people the benefit of the doubt, but rest assured that at this point I couldn't care less about what you think.

Last of all, a WW-reference is completely uncalled for and destroys whatever point you think you are trying to make.

Time to see if that ignore-option on here works as advertised.

Sorry, if you have felt offended, Paul. I think you should develop a more thick skin. It is what is needed around here.

Cheers and have a great day. I mean that.

Robert

[AlanHall]

Simply a personal observation and probably not as significant as I think it is, but...

When theater was the primary form of mass communication, it was considered a sign of success for the writers when folks would leave the theater whistling, singing, or humming the show tunes. The melodies were 'memorable'. The flip side of that is, of course, 'forgettable' which signals some very specific failures of melodic construction. Many a composition instructor will echo the same 80/20 rule that ML talks about. It's an idea that there needs to be a certain ratio (or near enough) of expected-to-unexpected elements in a piece in order to imprint on the neurons of the listeners, i.e., be 'memorable'. Too much of the "same old", and there's nothing distinctive about the melody for the listener to grab onto. Too much novelty, and the brain fails to conceptualize it, also leading to a failure to imprint.
Much of what I've learned via Taxi TV and this forum includes the importance of being able to analyze/dissect/reverse-engineer the reference tracks (or more generally, the genre represented by them) for the very reason that being able to absorb and emulate what works (and build on that!) is how the creative world has always operated. IMHO a correctly-placed "forgettable" critique is much more valuable than "needs work", because it actually points to a flaw in the construction and does not simply dismiss the effort.

TL;DR - asking why a person wrote something may be more productive than allowing the basal ganglia to make you see red when responding to a critique. Personally, it has taken me sometime several reads-through of the Taxi screener's comments I've received before I could see it as a constructive critique. Always look for the good. Always strive to improve.