Help understanding the ONE CENTRAL MOTIF note

[DolfoMan]

Good Morning Taxi people,

I thought it would be a good idea to reach out the forum and ask for some tips on this topic. I recently submitted some tracks to a listing that had this writing in the brief:

IMPORTANT NOTE FROM THE LIBRARY: "Many composers throw in way too many ideas and are not focused on ONE CENTRAL MOTIF - they try to keep things interesting by adding new harmonic lines and elements (melodies, even improvisations, etc.), instead of focusing on the productions and textures." Put simply, keep it SIMPLE! We know that other Libraries like to receive music with complementary A and B sections, but this Library is NOT one of them – stick with ONE CENTRAL MOTIF per submission please!

I know this is a common add on to taxi briefs and this is where my central question comes from.

I spend a good amount of time trying to wrap my head around this one because the examples with the brief, to my ears, had very clear B sections. I went through a search of older listings on the forwards blog that had this same add on a thought some of those tracks had soft B sections (some kind of change in the theme or the harmonic/rhythmic support, but not the whole of the section), and now checking out the cues that were forwarded on the blog I felt some of those also had pretty clear B sections. These ones seemed to mostly give variations in the theme and rhythmic support, I didn't feel much change in harmony to be fair. But even this, in my mind, seems counter to what the brief is telling me.

I really tried putting in some good effort to figure this out, thought I had it, and ultimately got returns for my cues being to repetitive and not having enough changes. Obvious frustration but more confusion now than anything.

I don't want to come off as digging at TAXI or those who got forwards, totally the opposite, I want to figure out how to better approach these listings. That's part of why I didn't put the specific listing in this post. I just want to figure out what thought process I'm missing when it comes to listings with this specific add on because I know it's used regularly. Has anyone else had a similar experience here? Does anyone have any general mental tips, tricks, or reminders they recommend for this sort rule in their writing process?

TIA

[cosmicdolphin]

Consider that it's perfectly possible to to take an 8 bar idea and using an A-A-A structure you can find enough variation within it to stretch that idea through an entire cue without it souding repetitive.

Here is a post about it from a few years ago

topic146048.html

[DolfoMan]

Consider that it's perfectly possible to to take an 8 bar idea and using a A-A-A structure you can find enough variation within it to stretch that idea through an entire cue without it souding repetitive.

Here is a post about it from a few years ago

topic146048.html

Thanks for posting that link. I knew there had to be some post about this in the past but didn't have luck looking for it. Really appreciate it.

[cosmicdolphin]

Consider that it's perfectly possible to to take an 8 bar idea and using a A-A-A structure you can find enough variation within it to stretch that idea through an entire cue without it souding repetitive.

Here is a post about it from a few years ago

topic146048.html

Thanks for posting that link. I knew there had to be some post about this in the past but didn't have luck looking for it. Really appreciate it.

Annoyingly it looks like the OP has deleted their first post so make sure you download the PDF that contains the info which is linked a few pages into the thread