Is This Appropriate?

[fjmurray]

I've been a member of Taxi off and on for a long time. I have a truckload of returns, a bucket of forwards, and one deal, but I've never encountered anything like Listener #416's most recent comments (Nov 2020) . In their return critique of 3 songs I submitted, they criticized them all for not having a "live feel" among other things (fair enough), and then they had this: "I think all 3 of these tunes had potential if you printed charts, handed them to real musicians, counted off the tune, and pressed record. " Aside from the implied insult in the phrase "real musicians", this is not usable advice in the middle of a pandemic, and it's not an economically feasible way to produce Taxi submissions, ever. So I requested a full review of all 3 to try to get more usable feedback. I was hoping for second opinions, but #416 did one of the reviews as well. (368's reviews of the other two were excellent). Yes, 416 had some useful stuff in there too, but then they decided to double down on their previously implied insult, making it explicit: "If you're not a real musician, why are you playing all the parts?" What?!?! (expletive deleted). What do they mean by "real musician", what makes them think they're entitled to bestow or deny that title, and what do they think they know about me? Let's keep the comments to the work at hand and the condescension to a minimum, please. Or is this appropriate?
The 3 songs are here, :
https://soundcloud.com/user-808509065/in-the-bag-again
https://soundcloud.com/user-808509065/so-you-said
https://soundcloud.com/user-808509065/some-funk

[cosmicdolphin]

Well of course ANY piece is going to sound better if played live by a group of decent live musicians

But that's just not practical or viable financially most of the time for Library Music. I agree that In The Bag is a tad midi/stiff and whilst I think it could be better it's no worse than stuff I've heard in Libraries and I agree with Graham if you replace the words " real musicians " with " live musicians " the feedback would maybe feel more palatable.

I think on the whole the music is in the ballpark of what's accepted into Libraries. I'm not sure what you're using to make your tracks but I did an Album of Funky type Pop recently for a Library. Not one instrument was a " real musician " so I had to pull a few tricks out the bag to maintain some sort of vibe and not have them too ' In The Box ' sounding. I think a lot of it was finding live percussion loops to add that helped a lot and also I pushed and pulled things around by very small amounts and some of the brass were live samples that I chopped up and shifted around. I guess with Pop you can get away with more though.


Mark