Any word on Cocktail Jazz Compilation?

[Paulie]

Ouch! That stings. Glad you got one through which gives you a chance of getting a deal down the road for that one and then being allowed to submit more. I guess submitting 10 wasn't a bad strategy!
...
And if you created these tracks because of this listing, the listing did you a huge favor.

Eight of the ten were created for the listing, the trumpet feature has been forwarded twice from a previous listing, so I thought I was good with that one. Screeners 416 and 448 liked it, 396 dissented.

Lots of good feedback here, tracks will be tweaked for sure. Looking forward to checking out the forwards blog on this one.

[Paulie]

Maybe I missed it, maybe it's new, but the Forwards blog is searchable. I searched for my name and found my first placements from May 2016 (two kitchy Muzak tracks).

https://blog.taxi.com/forward/

[eandersonmusic]

Yeah you can search a name or a listing # or even a keyword

[Paulie]

https://blog.taxi.com/forward/060223/

[melodea]

Brutal... 1 out of 10 forwarded. Here are five of the tracks, the rest are on my profile page as well.

• Shed A Tear - Forwarded.
• Noire Are You - Returned because ride cymbal was too hot.
• A Glance To Remember - Returned because of 20 seconds of silence at the end. There's no silence on the portal, or on the original file on my hard drive. Potral file transfer process did this, I'm asking for reconsideration, screener liked the track.
• Fog Of Love - Returned because trumpet is too hot in the mix.
• Your Hand In Mind - Returned because the piano sounds like two different players, not a single performance. Is a music supervisor really going to not put this under a fancy dinner scene because of that? C'mon man... the cocktail stuff I've had placed is barely audible, I think this one is a little silly.

Sharing to help people understand how closely our music is scrutinized, as well as to relieve a little pressure on my brain.

REALLY?! Cymbal too hot, c'mon!!!! This is NOT cool at all! Taxi needs to come up with something more serious than that. These reasons are only going to piss off members and built a bad reputation! We all know REAL reasons for returns (style off target, bad mix, wrong instrumentation, etc.......) BUT a cymbal being too hot!!!! I can't wrap my head around something like that, NOT understandable. You NEED to write Taxi my friend!

[jefflaplante]

The "hot cymbal" comment annoys me too. Any library or publisher can request those kinds of small mix tweaks during the deliverables phase. That shouldn't be a valid reason for a Taxi screener to return it.

[Paulie]

Exact feedback: "I like the feel here, but the ride cymbal feels a bit hot the whole way, a feel I'm having from the very beginning of the cue. More great sax work, we just need to be careful of the balance between all the instruments so we don't distract from any on screen action."

[Paulie]

For some reason I was thinking about this again last night and it bothered me. This is for a Taxi compilation, meaning that Taxi is the client creating a CD or list to deliver. As such, it seems to me that if they liked some of my tracks except for a single minor thing on any of them, they could have said "we like this track, can you remove the 20 seconds of silence at the end?' (still pissed about that, my original file and the file on my Taxi profile have no silence at the end, so something happened when it was uploaded.) Or "Hey, this is a great track, can you lower the ride cymbal a couple of dB?" I'm not saying Taxi should do this for it's regular listings... but in this case since Taxi is creating the list/compilation, they could easily exercise some creative control to create a really good collection. I think it's silly to dismiss quality content over incredibly minor nitpicks that are so easily remedied

[CTWF]

Thanks for the great feedback. I struggle with balancing brushes all the time, but I've heard this same feedback more than once I try comparing to various classic jazz recordings and the spectrum varies wildly. Part of the issue is my lack of hearing in general, but especially at the high end. This explains why I often get feedback of snares, hi hats, rides, etc. being too hot. I often check out the Ozone Tonal Balance graphic to make sure things aren't too crispy, but it's an art for sure.

Hey Paulie

Regarding the hearing/mix issue, it could be an idea to send all tracks to a buddy (on here, or elsewhere) before submitting. The peer review or the Friends of TAXI Discord could also be an idea.

Tom