Hanging in There

[terry93004]

I had great expectations having responded to the listing for a singer-songwriter tune for Netflix. An important element was the vocalist had to have a British accent. I contacted some singers I know in the UK (who are most definitely British). I submitted a male and female version. I was feeling good ... ugh ... both got knocked back. It hurt. The Screener commented about the lack of a British accent. Hmm ... And, the same Screener also rejected the Classic 70's rock songs I had submitted. So I was 0-5 on Monday
I noticed someone else recently posted on here that they were finished with TAXI after receiving 4 returns.
We have to be resilient ... did my Screener have a bad day and take it out on me? I doubt it. Yes, it hurt. We all pour our hearts into the songs. But, from experience, I know that these won't be last rejections (from TAXI or any other sources).
I say, "hang in there" ... be persistent. Keep going ... Yes?
Best wishes

[funsongs]

Couldn't help wanting to ask if you know/or contacted for this Nick Moxsom?
Better luck next time.

[cosmicdolphin]

The Screener commented about the lack of a British accent.

I'm a Brit and a lot of singers over here seem to suddenly have an American type accent when they sing ....speaking and singing accents can be quite different.

I noticed someone else recently posted on here that they were finished with TAXI after receiving 4 returns.

Only 4 ! Jeez.... Even once you get in Libraries you get stuff rejected on a regular basis. And most of your music will never get placed - It's part of the job.

I say, "hang in there" ... be persistent. Keep going ... Yes?

Yes but aim to be better with every track you make than the one before

Mark

[tresero]

The Screener commented about the lack of a British accent.

I'm a Brit and a lot of singers over here seem to suddenly have an American type accent when they sing ....speaking and singing accents can be quite different.

I noticed someone else recently posted on here that they were finished with TAXI after receiving 4 returns.

Only 4 ! Jeez.... Even once you get in Libraries you get stuff rejected on a regular basis. And most of your music will never get placed - It's part of the job.

I say, "hang in there" ... be persistent. Keep going ... Yes?

Yes but aim to be better with every track you make than the one before

Mark

That would be me, and it wasn't 4, it was 4 at one time and a longer story than I want to go on about. I've had plenty of rejected stuff. More than forwarded, that wasn't the point.

[KarenBraysher]

Hello , I don’t know if you saw the taxi TV just this last Monday which was the subject of the Busking listing ? I must admit I socked it to him in the comments it was a complete fast.
I am breed and born English from Brighton, I submitted a song which I wrote on the spot that weekend, it was a pub singalong featured the sea in the lyric in fact fishermen.
I included English charm, I spent 25 years performing including pubs and sometimes busking but it was a while ago now! I was rejected too. The screener said I didn’t sound British. Complete rubbish if you ask me. I was furious as you can imagine. Only to see on Monday only two English songs were forwarded, from the accent one from London and the other Manchester, there was an Irish sounding female too, but in England that would not be considered a typical busking song.
In England busking is entertainment, nowadays you have to have a permit, in my day the police would throw you off the pitch if you were no good or didn’t entertain.
So critique I have had back on my songs has mostly been crap, lies. The odd critique has been useful.
So a singer from OZ won the pitch. The screeners wouldn’t know a busker if it slapped them in the face tbh, most likely never been to England and live in their fantasyland. It was a poor show and a load of rubbish if you ask me, having stuck to the brief like glue. In England we would call it a load of Bollocks!

[Telefunkin]

Don't mince your words there Karen . I guess you'll not be submitting any Americana then for fear of upsetting any of our American friends? . Some valid points that were worth raising, but ultimately, its just a song and you still have it. Write some more.

[cosmicdolphin]

So a singer from OZ won the pitch.

Well isn't that just wizard

[KarenBraysher]

Yes I take your points but as our “Hang in there friend has stated” he received exactly the same generic critique as myself. Which is not on. We pay for a service? That is not being met.
And ultimately the goal posts moved.
A load of Tosh.
But I ain’t gonna loose sleep over it, just another nail in the coffin! Cheek of it.

[MBantle]

My feeling is that it has something to do with the 'direct to supervisor' type of brief. These listings are a bit different than regular listings and in some instances the person reviewing the tracks is also the one who decides what is being picked. In these cases you obviously cannot 'forward' multiple tracks as it is just one track that will be picked 'on the spot'. The reasons for rejection may therefore be perceived as being more 'creative' and that probably leads to the disappointment as expressed in this thread.

[Ted]

Karen, this listing was a tough one for me too. When the listing came out I looked through my back catalogue of unfinished song ideas and found one that had a chorus but no verses (a rarity for me, usually I have plenty of verses and choruses are hard. I spent that Saturday writing the lyrics and when I was done, I had surpassed my personal best.

Long story short, I had a family obligation on Saturday night, so I planned on tracking the song on Sunday morning-- with the deadline being 2PM CST. I was staying at my brother's place which is rather remote but it's a nice place to record vocals. My brother suggested the same thing that ML alluded to in this week's Taxi TV... He said I should run my mic and acoustic guitar into his Fishman Loudbox amp and mic that up-- and the result would sound closer to a real busker's setup. Great plan I thought. Unfortunately, on Sunday morning I realized we were one mic cable short of pulling this off. No music stores were open so I had to drive almost three and a half hours round trip to retrieve a mic cable from my place in the city.

By the time I got back, time was getting away from me; a lot of pressure to get a good take and I didn't have time to tune the vocals or do much EQ. At fifteen minutes before the deadline, I started to upload my song. That's when the downside of being in a rural location came back to bite me. The internet service decided to sh*t the bed. It took over 20 minutes for the song to upload that day. At about 2 minutes to deadline, I desperately submitted some random track that was already uploaded, with the intention of hitting the "edit" button and switching it out when real song finished uploading.

It was not to be. I know my performance and recording that day just wouldn't have made the cut. I was thinking my song was too sad anyway, but hearing the track that won, I was definitely on the right path. Also ML mentioned something about the TV show possibly involving "time travel" and I felt like crying because my lyrics were actually about time travel/a time warp a la "Brigadoon".

But I didn't have time to try to fake a British accent anyway. My singing was a bit pitchy plus recording through the amp setup didn't really end up as good as it sounded on paper. And at the end of the day, nobody cares why I failed. haha. I thought all the forwarded tracks were pretty good and well executed-- and I enjoyed listening to them.

In the end though, I was able to use this experience to give me the urgency to finish a song I'd been too lazy to finish, and to step up my writing in the process. I watched this week's Taxi TV episode with great interest.

The positive thing that I took away from it was this: it's proof that people can get good $$ sync placements from Taxi. Because ironically, I was just commenting to my brother last week "eh, you never really hear of someone going on the forums and saying "Hey I bagged that $3K sync placement on that TV show"-- what I see is just "hey I got a deal with a library"-- stuff of a more small money/royalty market.

(I did get a forward this week on a decent $$ sync instrumental listing and if I somehow happen to bag that one, I'll definitely mention it on the forums, haha)

This experience made me say to myself "hey I was in the ballpark this time and even though I got hit with some bad luck-- I made great progress and now I have a song that I can use in the future. And if I keep it up, one of these times things will go my way."

I've jumped on several of these ultra short-deadline "high bar" listings this year and I think this type of listing has done the most, out of anything, to inspire me to step up my game. If I have three weeks to do a track, I might or might not get around to it. If I have three days, I'm all over it.

There are a lot of really fun and tasty listings coming out as of late. Almost too many things to work on.

Cheers,


Ted