Horace And Dave's Excellent Adventure Cont.

[horacejesse]

July 28-29, 2007Hi,For anyone who didn't see this, HoraceJesse and I spent a couple of days at Taxi (day and a half or whatever) where we got to ask any question of anyone, open any drawer, look in any box, poke our nose into anyone's business. It was an amazing experience and really educational and insightful.The thing that keeps sticking out for me is that there are definitely two roads to take and they're not necessarily mutually exclusive. If I were someone writing music for these high bar listings, I would also be submitting for some film/tv/music library/publisher listings. I can't answer the "what if I sign my 'hit' song to a simple TV placement and then can't get it recorded as a hit" question. There has to be a balance somewhere and even the most unrealistic songwriter will admit that not ALL their songs are hits. I can say from personal experience that small successes can do wonders for bouying a dream for a larger success. Plus it's hard to imagine that a placement of a song into a popular film or television show wouldn't possibly be a stepping stone for something more toward the "big" dream. QUESTION #3: Are you a Taxi member?The question was answered by the handbook—No screener can be a member.QUESTION #4: Are you aware when people on the forum are addressing you or ranting at you?A. frequently B. sometimes C. neverEasily answered, (A), since inside the screeners’ breakroom is a cork bulletin board. Pinned to it is a selection of forum posts blasting or praising screeners, our recent rants and ramblings, to keep them in touch and make you wish you had spoken better. It is not required reading, but other than the sign above the sink asking you to wash your own cup, I didn’t notice much else to read.QUESTION #5: Separation of personal & Taxi values. Do you forward songs you dislike personally?A. frequently B. sometimes C. neverIn fact, all screeners questioned believed they had the ability to suppress their own tastes in favor of Taxi values and the listing at hand. Whether or not they actually can is still an open question of course. They have to go through an indoctrination, and the pit boss Sebastion monitors their work and progress pretty closely. Randomly, their critiques are critiqued. Sebastion is just a young guy (he surely cannot be even 30) but he really knows his stuff. Dave and I spent half a day as his new charges. His understanding of the Taxi approach to screening is complete. He critiqued our critiques. Of the half dozen country songs I critiqued, I forwarded two, somewhat above Taxi’s average. I was very impressed with one song, but Sebastion disagreed with me on nearly every point. That critique of my critique was a great lesson in just how high the bar is on a big country listing. It is like passing through the eye of a needle.QUESTION #6: Do you ever attach notes to submissions when forwarded to the listing party?A. frequently B. sometimes C. neverThe answer falls somewhere between sometimes and sometimes. My take on it was that the note is usually to explain that though a particular submission is flawed in some parts, other sections are so special that the screener felt the listing party should hear it anyway.The second evening Michael, Dave, Matto and myself went to dinner at an Italian place with more trophies than a hunting lodge, parading by on two legs. That evening my lower lip resumed its hopeless attacks on my canine tooth. I would have to chew for a week like a man with a broken jaw, while it repaired itself. The converstaion was great anyway.It was during this dinner that the brain of Michael Laskow could really be observed hard at work. The man is a veritable flood of ideas. They never seem to stop coming and almost all of them are about how to serve Taxi’s membership better. One innovation after another was put up for our feedback. I am able to tell you that several of these innovations are indeed on their way, I just cannot tell you what they are, because that would be like opening someone else’s Christmas present.This ain’t people magazine, folks. But I realize there are hundreds upon hundreds of you out there on every continent except Antartica, who never will meet some of the Taxi legends it was my privilege to become acquainted with. So a few words on their personalities here and there would not seem . Matt is a pretty natural person, easy to be with, I mean. I noticed that when he speaks seriously he thinks very hard, choosing his words as if examining each one before letting it go. It works, because just as on the forum, he always makes perfect sense. He will challenge you if he thinks you are full of beans on something. He has a lot of confidence and is a good listener. He looks so much like my cousin that I kept wanting to call him Lonnie. He loves backpacking. And I imagine that many of you will be comforted to know that even the mighty Matto has a forward rate of only about 70%. Quite good, and most of us would settle for it, but it is still a ways from perfect. Our conversation also made it obvious that a Taxi return stings him just as much as it does the rest of us, and he still is not used to it, but being a realist he accepts that it is going to happen some of the time and moves on—thirty percent of the time in fact.I think that it we (the forum members) would be fooling ourselves to think that getting a track of music on any hit artists next album (ala Gwen Stafani, Justin Timberlake, etc) would be anything but an astronomical long shot. Aside from the example I was given, think of all the former Grammy award winning and nominated songwriters that are also part of the process with their new songs in the mix. I don't have anything specific to base this on, but I don't believe that the Faith Hill example is anything but a basic representation of what happens on all albums for all top-level artists, regardless of genre (R&B, Pop, Country). Also, there's the fact that some (maybe most) of the available slots on an album are already taken, music written by the producer, his brother-in-law, etc. Studio "politics" are still part of the process so, unfortunately, not all songs are selected based on their merits or through the "ultimate" screening process. However, several Taxi members have not only done that (track of music on a famous artist's album) but have ridden that track into the charts. So... realistically I wouldn't be pre-ordering my new Maserati even if I did get a forward or many forwards on these types of things, but I wouldn't give up either because it's been done before by Taxi members - more than once. It does put into perspective the "criticisms" that Taxi has had "only" three chart riding songs from members. The fact that ANY came from one single place like Taxi really speaks to the connections that are available through these listings. QUESTION #7: What do you do if you screen a song that is way off target for the category, but which you feel is truly exceptional? Is there a company procedure for that?Michael told us Taxi has a fail-safe for these rare occasions. Be advised, it would have to be a super great song. I am trying to say I think it is very rare, if you read me. Over the years a few songs have been held then re-directed without charge to an appropriate listing when one came up. The fail-safe is used one out of X thousand times, so don’t count on it. You have a much better chance submitting your songs as close to the target as possible. QUESTION #8: How many days and hours a week do you screen for Taxi?The most a screener can work in a week is twenty hours. This might seem kind of skinny, but after undergoing some screener training and doing some screening, four hour shifts seemed like a reasonable idea. Taxi has a lot of experience and data on that. Screening for Taxi is not a full time job. The screeners have other gigs happening, usually industry related. This came directly from Michael.In the early afternoon the Taxi office clears out for a few minutes and is deserted again. By one o’clock the next shift is down to it, typing and listening away. Thirty different people a day screen submissions. The screeners represent diversity in every way you can think of. Basically, as a group, they look like Los Angeles in a nutshell.I thought screening would be a breeze. Dave and I went through the training sequence with Sebastian. I don’t know about Dave, but I was confident.But once you are sitting there, the critique form is on the screen before you and the song is playing, you suddenly have a different take on it. You hear a lot of things that are right and a lot that are wrong in a majority of submissions, if my sample was representative, and now you have to sort it out and make sense of it better than the author, not only without offending the author but by offering advice so cogent that it will eventually make them grateful.Now you see how easy it isn’t.QUESTION #9:How many minutes does it take you to screen a 3 minute song, including critique? Do you write while you are listening?Evey screener said about eight to ten minutes. That sounds reasonable, because as a beginner I was putting them out in about fifteen minutes by my estimation, and it is only an estimation, because I was too busy to time myself. The screeners do write while they are listening. Sometimes they stop and back up, write some more. Taxi’s own statistics have the screener average slightly slower at between ten and eleven minutes.Cutting and pasting is prohibited. All screener responses and advice must be unique to the song. If a screener were pasting the same comments to many different songs, Sebastian would root them out pretty quickly. Fortunately, in fifteen years only a few screeners have gotten that lazy, and they were escorted to the nearest sidewalk.The screening system is well monitored and supervised. The thing to remember is that there is an orderly system in place. It has a clean feel. From there the talents of the individual screeners come into play. You would be wrong to think some of them are not brilliant.On the second day came the highlight of a trip which, for me, was all highlight. Michael, who must be the most generous host in the world, arranged another surprise for Dave and me. We were feted to free live critiques of a piece apiece, if you will, from several of Taxi’s premier screeners in their fields.Whenever you are in LA you understand that in any profession you can name, some of the world’s best are geographically nearby, from skateboarders to neuro surgeons to musicians. There may be keyboard players on this or that hillside or carrying dishes in a restaurant where you sit, who would blow your butt straight back to Oskaloosa. No offense to Oskaloosans. On a gallon of gas you could drive to the homes of some of the world’s best-loved songwriters. You could drive to the homes of at least five contenders for the best songwriter ever. Some of the world’s best song critiquers have got to be relatively nearby too. Right? If you believe there is such a thing. They are probably not in Oskaloosa, at least not in any concentration. No one should be floored with surprise if a few of them could be found floating around Taxi from time to time or shift to shift, the world’s first and foremost organization of its kind, which specializes in this very process, as we all know. Do some of the world’s best chemists work for Al’s Concrete or do they work for DuPont? I think you get the connection.Michael did not arrange for me to have anything less than the best he could offer. My song was critiqued twice independently, by two of the best in the field of country that Michael Laskow knows of. I’ll take that. I did take it.The first was a lady. She was from Nashville and had the accent. (This all took place in Michael’s office). Out of respect for screener anonymity I will refer to her as M., which is her first initial. After introductions, I chose not to sit and fidget in the room with Dave and Michael while M. listened to my song, which is a slow country song and 3:40 long. Instead, “See you in three minutes and forty seconds,” I said smartly to my two buddies and the stranger, and headed downstairs and out into the massive heat for a quick smoke. The fact that I felt comfortable enough to do this says a lot for the way Michael does things.. You know it is all right to be yourself. Cluck, cluck, cluck…OK, I made a horrible decision not to stay and watch the screener’s body language while she worked. I was weak.Of course I was not one second late in returning. As the last strain of my country family anthem sounded, I slipped back into the room from my strategic position just outside.M. had only listened to my song once, but her comprehension of it seemed pretty amazing. She had all kinds of ideas. She did not like repeating the bridge, and wanted to excise that from the anthem. (The second critiquer would want that too).I might as well tell you now that the second critiquer would be none other than John Brahaney. If I remember correctly, he is the one who would label a certain section of my piece as a “pre-chorus,” scratching out my designation of “refrain,” on a copy of the lyrics. M. wanted to eliminate this repeat on the pre-chorus, but John liked the repeat and wanted to keep it.There was a certain “pair” of words I used as a rhyme and which I knew were risky in a country song. My studio partner and sometime writng partner had already harrassed me about it. M. and John harrassed me some more. Of course they do not really harrass you, and I am not doing a very good job of describing how the review comes down. They were not there at the same time. It was two separate reviews. I don’t think they even knew about each other. I am sort of putting them together to condense the writing and because that is what starts happening in your brain afterwards anyway.I had used a chorus that grew into more lines each time it was repeated as the song progressed. John wanted all the lines in earlier. He read the final chorus aloud:“Now that’s a chorus,” he proclaimed, meaning I should have made it like that all the way through. He felt very strongly on the point. (I later took his advice).They both felt the song was too long.M. got a vibe that no one else but myself had gotten, as far as I know. I won’t tell you what it is because I am working on the song again. That is one of the effects of their critiques: I went back to work on something I had previously called finished.I don’t have to tell my fellow highbar aspirants how a song can wear you out. You slave for days, weeks and even months to smooth every wrinkle, usually from the lyrics. There comes a point when you are sort of all-in. Your last chips (energy) are in the pot. All you have to do is win this one and the song is finished. At least that is what you have got yourself convinced of. You have been there before with that song. And it is not an unreasonable conclusion you are forming. You have really shaped it up from three weeks ago. You are damned glad you didn’t give up then.I had already won that pot as far as I was concerned. Sure, a few final touches on the singing and maybe a spot or two on the phrasing were in order and had not escaped me, but for all intents and purposes, it was finished. Sound familiar?The problem that can occur at this point in the creative process, it seems to me from my own experience, is that you get frozen into a concept of your own song which may not be showing its best face, but to you it seems like the only face possible. This is because you have spent so much time on the details that certain larger aspects of the song have frozen up on you and you do not even realize it. Pet phrases that may be hurting the song have been given a permanent place, and to you that is great. Your concept of the song itself has stopped evolving because, after all, you are just on a small mop-up detail. Right? The last thing you are looking for at this stage of your exhaustion is a paradigm shift which would entail practically starting over again or at least doing a major overhaul.You may have locked yourself into an inferior concept of your own song!!! You are practically useless to yourself at this point in determining if this is so. Your friends always were useless when it came to such fine points. You learned a long time ago that if they go ape shit over your song, then they think it is great. If they do anything less, they are being polite. This is a rule you can take with you to your grave when you go. The only response you want is ape shit, and anything else is bullshit, which is the wrong kind.I venture to say that most of the time we will not dig ourselves out of this pit at this stage in the song process. We are far more likely to convince ourselves that we are finished and can finally get on to something else. What a relief we feel. That is one of the main reasons we are now useless.Prideful fool that I can be, I do not like admitting that I had locked myself into an inferior concept of my own song, and that a pair of outsiders stepped right up and spotted it presto. To be quite honest, it was only later that the full value of their suggestions started to come into focus for me. At the time I was disappointed they were hacking my baby up that way and were not going ape shit, even though small rays of light were already getting through to me.These were called live critiques, and I do not know how they compare to custom critiques for detail. They took about fifteen to twenty minutes apiece. These two master screeners had agreed on several key points, given three mniutes apiece to listen.I came away slightly wounded and firmly impressed. I might have been one of those who before would have said, “There is no such thing as a world class critiquer of songs. It is a bullshit category.” I bluntly declare, I have changed my mind. Both M. and John were a complete class act. They both saw things which, at that point in the process, it had become well nigh impossible for me to uncover. They have inspired me to learn more about the modern concept of song form, a subject I thought I had sufficiently covered to pursue the Big One. What would be the correct dollar price for what I received? Hardly anyone else could have given to me what they did. Priceless is the word.If the critiques had not been live, I would not have gotten their import. I know my stubborn self. I likely would have gone into paroxysms of denial like I almost did anyway. Lucky me: Michael has an instinct for all manner of things. I don’t know where he gets his instinct, but I wish I had some of it. Why did I receive two critques instead of just one? I don’t know. Maybe it was Michael’s instinct again. Maybe he understood that a single critiques was not enough to budge a monument of stubborness. Like I said, lucky me.Critiques on a high bar vocal pitch may be a completely different animal from a custom critique on an instrumental that is library bound. This would require specific musical advice as pointed as the lyrical advice I received. In some ways it seems it would be harder to do the instrumental critique and for it to contain as much value. The high bar vocal critiquers have a template to work from, a philosophy of form which is either traditional or invented more recently. But at least it is in place and they have it to guide them. I do not know what instrumental critiquers have that they can use as a guide, so I do not have enough information to address the subject.One thing to remember though... even if your track was the only one they received, the bar would still be the same. So at least for the purpose of getting forwarded, you're really only competing with the bar that's been set, so in a sense you're just competing with yourself to write progressively better. I probably didn't really make that clear, although we all kind of secretly know that. I'm glad you brought that up or at least reminded me to clarify. It's extremely important for our own "mindset" when making these submissions that it's the bar we're competing against for forwards, not the music of the other members submitting. One thing though, there are times where there's an "unspoken limit" or maybe even a "spoken limit" on how many songs a label wants for these kinds of things. Don't misread that. What I mean by that is that if all 1,000 submissions "make the bar" the label doesn't want 1,000 submissions from one source regardless. That only makes sense. Based on the tracks I heard while I was there, well, to be polite, you're not competing with 1,000 Grammy award winning songs so the "limit", if any, really isn't an issue if you get my drift. If you ignore the number of potential submissions and just pretend that you're the only one submitting, you're really not fooling yourself. If the track makes the bar it'll get a forward. QUESTION #10. Do Taxi members in general have an accurate understanding of the categories, genres and sub-genres, etc, they submit to?The screeners don’t think our concept is accurate enough, fellow passengers. They are the ones sitting there listening five days a week. They say that people have their brands of Rock sometimes confused and overlapping too much, and there are a lot of different brands of Rock to confuse. Michael would like to see more people taking the time to learn the categories a little finer by using the suggested listening Taxi provides. He would like to see them taking more advantage of all the educational content Taxi offers or suggests. To see you educated in the business is a continuous mission of his, as you know, if you read any of his letters. I am not a spokesman, I am just telling you what he told me.If you submit high bar song pitches through Taxi, it would be helpful to know some of the basic things Taxi screeners are trained to appreciate and look for, like structural soundness. If you have organized your song poorly, it has less of a chance. The good thing is that Taxi’s standards are a current reflection of industry standards, so by learning the former, you would attain an education in the latter, or vice versa.My trip to Taxi Land was a great experience. I further solidified my friendship with Dave and got to hang around with people like Michael, John Brahaney and Matto. I was surprised to learn Matto and John did not know each other and had never met. We had a six-way discussion in Michael’s office that was a powerhouse and lasted more than an hour. I took a lot from that discussion that is going to stay with me. I asked my list of questions to this lineup of all stars as the final stamp of opinion and authority.I would endorse Taxi. For years I was a pro poker player, and I am pretty good at sniffing out fakers, bluffers, cons and charlatans. I sense legitimacy in my investment. That is just one man’s opinion, but everything in my trip affirmed this view. Taxi has a clear concept of itself. Taxi is Michael Laskow in business form. It has the same ethics he has. He made it that way with a passion and he is still making it. Perhaps the warden issued new blankets just for the inspection and took them back immediately, but I don’t think so. The entire staff at Taxi, as advertised, is as friendly and relaxed as you are going to see. Everyone works steadily but is not stressed. It is a cool place with cool people and I really enjoyed being around there.I am still getting things out of it, and will for quite a while. Writing things down here has helped me put my own thoughts in order. Thanks to those who read. And endless thanks to Michael for his generosity and allowing me a new perspective.My hope is that some members will find Dave's and my reports useful. If I could put everyone through my experience in TaxiLand I would. Some folks it would not have much impact on, others would be as beneficially affected as I was.What the trip was for Dave in terms of impact, I don't know. But for this green country boy it was the world.I have been writing songs for most of my life, but now I look at the whole exercise differently. That is pretty amazing for one 48 hour trip. It did not happen all at once. In fact it is still happening. I am only beginning to realize the scope of its impact on me.Before I left for TaxiLand, I said, "The worst case scenario is that I go down there and learn a lot." The best case scenario can be easily imagined by any Taxi member. Coming back on the airplane I was convinced the best case scenario had not occured and that the worst case scenario had been a minor disappointment.Fortunately, I was wrong. The best case scenario is the one that actually happened. I wasn't ready for what I thought was the best case sceario. I more needed what I got. That was the best case scenario. I had not known it at the time, but the intervening weeks have made that crystal clear.It also made me realize people are not just blowing smoke when they rave about the benefits of the Taxi rally. After being around Michael and his squad for a few normal working days, I can see the rally experience must be that X 50 for intensity and learning opportunity.