Please be honest in your response

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jeffabbey
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Please be honest in your response

Post by jeffabbey » Sat May 17, 2008 9:14 am

I will be joining taxi in the near future when I finish the songs that I’m working on but I need your ears to help me before I do so. I only have one song at the present time that I will be submitting called “Sang You to Sleep”. Go to http://abbeydigitalarts.com/CD/SangYouT ... htmlPlease give an honest response.Jeff

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Re: Please be honest in your response

Post by ckbarlow » Sat May 17, 2008 10:47 am

Quick takes:1-is the vocal pitch correction supposed to be obvious (Cher style)?2-what genre would you throw this at? And are you pitching this performance/recording of it, or are you pitching the song for someone else to pick up and re-record?3-it felt like it took a while to give me a hook that I would remember. Probably what hurt that most is that on first listen -- before I've got the groove in my head, because the second listen was better -- is the sparse arrangement at the top of the tune, which makes the listener work a little harder to figure out where the downbeats are. Without more clue to the downbeats (I'm not saying put obvious downbeats in there, just more clues), the listener doesn't have a timing reference to put the melody / hook in, and the result is that they can't remember it easily.4-I've been working on country stuff lately, and in country you want the title to be really obvious. Listening to it, I think the title might be "I'll be there for you," but I *really* dig the title "Sang you to sleep," so I wonder if there's a way to give that phrase more prominence.5-some great guitar work!6-make sure the rhythm section is tight, tight, tight. It's clearly programmed drums, yet there are some spots when the guitar parts aren't just freakin' *locked* to the beat and they ought to be for this kind of tune.OK, so that's my quick take. I think this has a TON of potential and you should work mostly on the instrumental arrangement to tighten it up -- especially rhythmically -- and give the listener just a little more help at the beginning as I was describing earlier. Beyond that, see if you can make the title more obvious. Repeating chorus at the end that alternates the lines "I'll be there for you" (harmony parts) and "I sang you to sleep" (lead vocal only), overlapped??

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Re: Please be honest in your response

Post by liamkelly » Sat May 17, 2008 11:08 am

May 17, 2008, 12:14pm, jeffabbey wrote:I will be joining taxi in the near future when I finish the songs that I’m working on but I need your ears to help me before I do so. I only have one song at the present time that I will be submitting called “Sang You to Sleep”. Go to http://AbbeyDigitalArts.com and in the upper right-hand corner click on “Songs by Jeff Abbey” and then click on the title “Sang You to Sleep” and please give an honest response. Don’t bother with the other two songs there.JeffHey JeffWelcome aboard Always a good idea to offer opinions on others' tracks in the beginning Might get more people to listen to yours I'm not very familiar with this style so I'll just toss in my 2c to get you going. I found the stop/start style of the drumming very distracting. I'm all for it, in principle, but if executed so often it loses the tension/release thing. At least for me, anyway.I quite enjoyed the song and thought the harmonied guitar solo was great but then I grew up on Thin Lizzy The singer is good but the Autotune is very noticeable at 22s and 2m33s. Of course, you might have wanted that effect The biggest part of submitting songs to Taxi is matching your songs to exactly what the listing is asking for, if possible. There are many, many different listing requests and I'm sure there's listings for your stuff. May need a few tweaks though.As I said... just to get you going. Keep or sweep.Liam

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Re: Please be honest in your response

Post by michael11 » Sat May 17, 2008 11:32 am

Other than the (Cher) effect on the Autotune I liked it!I found the arrangement interesting and quirky.michael
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Re: Please be honest in your response

Post by jeffabbey » Sat May 17, 2008 1:54 pm

Hello CK, Liam and Michael,My intention was to pitch the song and not my singing so I used the pitch correction so my sour notes would not get in the way of the song as it stands right now. But I do intend to re-sing the song without pitch correction simply by singing it in tune so that the obvious pitch correction does not get in the way of the song when I send it up to TAXI for final critique.Country music uses real life story themes and CK is correct in that the title is obvious to the hook of the song. In other words, hook them with the title that they identify with and then hook them again with the melody of that title within the song. “It Won’t be Long” was the original title CK and the hook for that matter, but “Sang You to Sleep” was what was standing out for most people and so I renamed it. I still don’t think that I have a strong enough hook with this song though but I think I’m going to take your advice CK and put the name “It Won’t be Long” back when I pitch to TAXI.The genre will be pop and my intentions are to keep it sparse up front as well as abstract. The opening guitar establishes “one” and then I want to leave them hanging for a while until the drums come in. Poetic license, if you will. However, Liam brings up a very good point in that I’ve overdone it with too many drum stops and now that I’m listening to it that from that perspective, I’m also finding it distracting.You’ve all been a great help. Thanks for your honest input, Jeff

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Re: Please be honest in your response

Post by liamkelly » Sun May 18, 2008 1:05 am

May 17, 2008, 4:54pm, jeffabbey wrote:However, Liam brings up a very good point in that I’ve overdone it with too many drum stops and now that I’m listening to it that from that perspective, I’m also finding it distracting.You’ve all been a great help. Thanks for your honest input, JeffNo problem, Jeff. Thanks for taking it so well and best of luck with the tweaks

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Re: Please be honest in your response

Post by ckbarlow » Sun May 18, 2008 5:09 pm

Jeff, also, what Liam said about "the biggest part of TAXI being matching the songs to the listing" could not be more correct in my experience. It is so much about it being exactly what they're looking for, and sometimes that's frustrating because you'd have to be a mindreader, music is really hard to describe with words, etc. etc. One thing I noticed is that all three of us said some similar things, so that should be pretty helpful. (You might find that by comparison, TAXI critiques might differ tremendously from one to the next -- so when you do get consistent comments, it's probably worth heeding.)Main thing is, don't get discouraged. Don't quit. Never ever ever quit. Keep working at it. Try to make every song better than the last one.

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Re: Please be honest in your response

Post by jeffabbey » Sun May 18, 2008 7:31 pm

CK,I do take all of these things into consideration and there is no way that I can get discouraged. I stop performing live back in my mid 20’s and only just started playing my guitar two years ago and now I’m in my mid 50’s. The group that I was in, back then, came very close to a record deal but the closer and closer I got to the music industry the less and less attractive it became.At the present time I am trying to write for my young nephew who won the American Idol contest in Virginia last year and made it to the semi finals before the producer of the show this year. He was told by the producer and the two other judges that his was the best voice they had heard all day but he wasn’t American Idol material because he looked to much like one of the Waltons from the TV show. So much for the industry.He used to be one of the front singers for the Jerry Falwell Ministries choir and when he would perform a-cappella he would get standing ovations. It is my hope that I can get him up hear to New York when I finish out a few passable pop songs and have him be the final singer before I pitch to TAXI. However, a Nashville writer also has his eyes on him and wants to take him “Country”, which is probably more his genre. But he’s also very interested in the pop I’ve been writing for him. However, if the Nashville song writer does pick him up, and I hope he does, then I’ll be the final singer, without the pitch correction, when I make my pitches to TAXI.So basically I’m doing this for kicks. If I can get a song sold for someone else to sing… COOL. If no song is sold, then at least I had a lot of fun doing it.Jeff

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Re: Please be honest in your response

Post by hummingbird » Sun May 18, 2008 8:21 pm

May 18, 2008, 10:31pm, jeffabbey wrote:At the present time I am trying to write for my young nephew who won the American Idol contest in Virginia last year and made it to the semi finals before the producer of the show this year. He was told by the producer and the two other judges that his was the best voice they had heard all day but he wasn’t American Idol material because he looked to much like one of the Waltons from the TV show. So much for the industry.wierd. Haven't they heard of Beauty and the Geek?Don't they know John-boy and Grandpa were Mountain Idols?
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Re: Please be honest in your response

Post by jeffabbey » Mon May 19, 2008 11:23 am

May 18, 2008, 11:21pm, hummingbird wrote:wierd.Don't they know John-boy and Grandpa were Mountain Idols?Hummingbird, you just cracked me up big time. This is a classic post.However, I'm the one who's the Geek in the family.Love your humor,Jeff

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