There are pretty frequent old-school listings, so it may be just a matter of focusing on the listings that fit what you do best. In fact, one of the recent ones is for 70s/80s/90s rock ballads. My most recent forward was for one looking for "original classic adult contemporary songs" where the example songs came from the likes of Dan Fogelberg and Anne Murray. My entry was a song I'd written back in the late 90s, with a vocal I'd originally tracked for a 2009 album, but replacing the rest of the tracks to fit somewhere closer to a "Leader of the Band" style.wallypeterson wrote: ↑Wed Dec 04, 2019 11:06 amThanks Rick. Yeah, my two biggest obstacles to overcome initially will be A) I'm old-school in recording. I don't have a DAW because I don't have a "computer", just a Chromebook, which mean I don't have the digital tools to do things like auto-correction, automated levels, etc. Just a 24 track with manual faders, and I have to get the recording right from the jump to make it sound decent. and B) I'm old-school, period. Meaning I don't listen to very much modern music at all, at least what's in the "mainstream". So everything I write ends up sounding 70s, 80s, 90s, or 'timeless', but not really modern/contemporary. From an artistic point of view that's not a bad thing imho, but I do understand that if I want to make money doing music commercially I'll have to adapt. Let's hope I can
If you want to branch out into more modern stuff, I think you'll find it necessary to start listening to more modern stuff, finding what you like in that, and trying to learn what makes it work. I haven't had much luck on the modern pitches I've tried thus far, typically getting comments that the songs and/or recordings are dated sounding, so I've temporarily stopped making those pitches until I get a better understanding on the specifics (I think I'm getting to that point on the songwriting front) and, more importantly get to the point of being able to implement what I'm learning. Funnily enough, though, my other forward this time through TAXI was for an "experimental electronica" instrumental opportunity, using something I put together last time I was a TAXI member (back in 2010-2011) for a pitch asking for something in the style of Chemical Brothers. I didn't get forwarded then, and it was something totally out of my comfort zone (and knowledge area, though I did study a few of their tracks to try to understand them), but I figured the result might work for the more recent opportunity so gave it a shot.
If you find that the vocal pitchiness is getting you rejected for the kinds of opportunities you pitch, I'd suggest you'll need to either bite the bullet and get a computer and DAW and learn how to use them, or hire someone who can deal with that side of things for you, sending them your raw tracks to pitch correct and possibly mix. Of course, that, in and of itself, might be challenging if you don't have a computer to be able to digitize your audio tracks since you'd need someone who can deal with your format of analog recordings to digitize them prior to doing the work.
Of course, the other option (beyond finding a way to track the vocals without the pitchiness) would be to mainly pursue instrumental listings where vocals won't be an issue. It seems to me that there are lots of those available.
FWIW, I started out old school on the recording front, initially with a Tascam reel-to-reel 8-track (at least if you don't count some early going back and forth between two cassette decks during high school), then moving to ADAT, then finally to the computer. I've been using the computer for the MIDI side of things since at least the mid-80s and for audio recording probably in the last half or the 90s. Even in my early days of using the computer for MIDI while using tape for vocals, I could never imagine going backwards, and I'm way past the point where I could even conceive of it at this point. Perhaps you might find you'd also like it if you tried it?
Rick
