Genre/Style Labeling

[Tcounts]

Hi! I’m pretty new and have made some submissions. I am missing the mark on the genres I am thinking my songs fit into and how I think they are comparing to the examples we get. How can I get help identifying where these songs “live” stylistically? Thanks!!

[cosmicdolphin]

Hey Tim

I replied about your song but then I saw this post afterwards which gives much more context to your other thread.

It sounds like you have made a common mistake that many other new members before you have made. The mistake is that folks make music and write songs for X number of years and they get pretty good at it, and people they know tell them that their songs would work great in a TV show or something and eventually they discover Taxi and join up with a hard drive full of existing songs that they plan to pitch to the Taxi Lsitings.

That almost always results in a bunch of returns and rejection which often mystifies the new member because up until now they've only ever had people say nice things about their music, and they may even have been successful in terms of streaming or playing live gigs etc. before joining Taxi.

The problem is you're now playing a different game where the rules are not the same, dealing with industry Pro's ( screeners, library owners etc ) and not only is the bar higher but the requirements for the industry are different to what you have probably been doing previously. This often means any existing songs, even really good ones are less suited for sync as it's a different animal. For example, if I listen to your song " He's alright " on Bandcamp - it's a decent song and well recorded and performed but lyrically it would be no good because it tells it's own story and would never work for a TV or Movie scene unless they made the movie based on your song !

People often write in styles that hardly ever get used in film and TV too, a lot of sync music needs to sound contemporary i.e. like it's from the Billboard Charts - because that's what the people who watch the TV shows are into. There are some more evergreen genres though that may suit your style and retro music is asked for at times.

The well worn phrase around here is " Write to the Listings " ...so forget your old songs. Start afresh. Pick a listing in your style, and then write to that. Most of them have week or two deadline so ideally you need to be able to write , record , mix and master in a home studio so you can work fast enough. But once you have witten enough songs for specific Listings then you'll build up a new, sync friendly catalogue that is much more suited to the needs of the industry.

All this advice is on Taxi TV and various forum threads so I would take time to watch as much as you can , read the reccommeneded books like the ones from Robin Frederick. Some folks decide to do instrumentals as well which can be faster and easier to make Vs a full song and an easier path into working with Film & TV Libraries.

Hope that helps. Best of Luck.

Mark