Horace And Dave's Excellent Adventure

[horacejesse]

Horace And Dave’s Excellent AdventureJuly 28-29, 2007Imagine my surprise. I think you can.Checking my answering machine yesterday, the first words I heard were, "Hey, Jesse, its Michael Laskow from Taxi..."And it really was. If I had taken a hundred guesses who the message on my machine was from, Michael Laskow would not have been among them. I had read on here that he has called members from time to time, but I assumed it was only the good guys he called.He addressed one of my recent posts where I mentioned that a screener commented that my country submission was a folk song with a hint of country, whereas another screener had described it as "very tradtional country."Yup, he was concerned about that. The discrepancy bothered him. He asked me to send him a copy so that he might judge for himself. He also informed me that in 98% of the cases similar to mine, the screener turns out to be right. Hmmm...but which one?I was stunned to see the kind of detail the chief was willing to delve into for us wee folk. To be the subject of this sudden attention rather overwhelmed me with appreciation, even though it was the issue itself that attracted him and not the song per se, which has a perfect record so far of four rejections. I can't argue about that, because the more I listen to my singing on that song on various sound systems, the more I cringe and redden from my corner. Until a better singer replaces me, it hardly matters yet what anyone else's reasons are for rejecting it, when I still have my own.That should be the end of the story. Right? Hold onto your wigs.Out of the blue Michael invited me to LA at his expense to see the Taxi operation firsthand and to go through the one day (or one day of) the training program for screeners so that I could experience the other side of the fence.It was then my own knee hit me in the chin, twice in fact, and I only heard his next few sentences with the clarity that Mike Tyson heard the referee counting when Holyfiled knocked him out and he was struggling to stand up and get his mouthpiece in backwards at the same time, neither of which he managed.I did of course accept that gracious invitation, and my visit to Taxi Land is tentatively scheduled for near the end of this month. After my visit I will play reporter and share with the forum how I spent my summer vacation.I don't know how to thank Michael for his kindness except with those same old two words that hardly seem adequate.Thanks to him, for leaving no doubt he is my faithful tag team partner in a tough business.I am not nervous, just excited.Hey Jesse,That is outstanding! I'll tell you, I'd pay good money to go through their screener training. That would be an investment in the future that I know would pay in spades.I'll predict that whatever you learn in just the one day of screener training will far outweigh the value of airfare, hotel, and food. Tell 'em all "hey" for us.Well, folks, my visit to Taxi Land starts tomorrow. I calculated backwards, and I have not been on a commercial airplane for 21 years! That must seem astounding to some of you frequent fliers. I will finally get to see what our new world of airport security is like.Information that will be of use to myself and all Taxi members is the goal, since I am given the go-ahead to report fully on my experiences good, bad or indifferent. Of course I have prepared a list of questions which may all be answered anyway in the course of screener training.I think most of us have already figured out that Taxi is a bit of an unusual company in the way that it conducts business. All companies profess to having nothing but your satisfaction and interests in mind. So the next time your auto insurer or credit card company flies you to Omaha or wherever and pays for your room, so you can inspect company operations, do not be shy about reporting on it.Of course they never will. A proton will have time to decay before they do.I will be meeting my buddy at LAX. His name is Dave Walton, a character some of you may already be familiar with. Whatever I happen to miss in the way of detail, the sharp mind of Dave will no doubt scoop up.A lot of members probably wish they were going instead of me. I can't explain it. I don't get lucky very often. But before you become too envious, realize it may have something to do with a forward ratio you would not envy. That ratio is what I would like to increase, not only for myself, but for any member who feels they should be doing better than they are.In a few days I will be back online to write my summer vacation paper.SPOILER ALERTDave Walton is just as personable, humorous and intelligent in real life as he is on the forum boards, but he looks nothing like his forum picture. He is not a sleepy-eyed fellow who talks slow. Just the opposite. Dave is alive with ideas. You already know that, if you’ve ever read any of his forum posts. Our situation had both of us amped up. We were a couple of kids with passes for all the rides in Taxi Land.END OF ALERTTaxi Land (Dave) Part I SummaryAlthough we're just regular Taxi members just like everyone else, myself and another Taxi and forum member (HoraceJesse) took the opportunity to visit Taxi, poke around, ask questions, and go through a quick, one-day-summary version of screener training. Independently we're posting our experiences and info we picked up.Taxi has roughly 12,000 members. For popular listings they get submissions (songs to be screened) in the high 3-digit figures. For more obscure listings (like Armenian Pop/Rock/Electronica) they get submissions in the low 2-digit figures. The other listings fall between these two extremes. It doesn't really matter because music is forwarded relative to the bar that's been set, not relative the the music of the other members submitting. High bar listings are very difficult to get forwarded on because of who they're going to (top artists at places like EMI, Warner Chappell, etc). The focus is on the quality of the song (melody, lyrics, structure) not on production because it'll be re-recorded anyway. Film/TV listings have a much lower bar (relatively speaking) so it is easier to get fowards and deals. More "slots" available for placement but you need many of these if your goal is to make a living. The focus is on quality of the recording and production with a secondary focus on the song. It has to be good but it doesn't have to make current top artists in the genre obsolete. The sky is the limit in terms of what kind of music can be placed in Film/TV but obviously some things are generically more useful in many situations than others.Michael and Dave met me at the Taxi offices. I was several hours late by way of airline delays, but they both seemed in good spirits. It was nearly eight o’clock and the LA evening was warm—like T-shirt warm—so after a few minutes outside we went upstairs and Michael gave us the grand tour of the deserted Taxi headquarters. Deserted, that is, except for Elvis, the swami of swivel watching over the dimmed screening room. Right across from the screening room is the break room. The break room does not seem to get a lot of business. The people at Taxi are too busy to congregate for bull sessions. Everyone is working away almost everytime you look.Michael took us to dinner that night at the Sagebrush Café. The shrimp burrito was marvelous. I would have enjoyed mine more if I had not continued the recent trend of biting myself in the lower lip. About two days before I left for Taxi I accidentally bit myself while destroying a hamburger and the lip swelled up, necessitating extreme caution. Unfortunately for me, I was not cautious enough. Once during our dinner conversation I bit myself so hard I am sure I would prefer the attack of a Great White. Of course I never even flinched.HoraceDracula"The contrast between high bar artist pitches and common film/tv listings"Howdy,I'm probably going to just go chronologically in terms of the main experiences. First, when my car pulled up in front of the "Taxi address", I found nothing but a vacant warehouse. Kind of suspicious right away... OK, just for a little "stage setting". Taxi is in Calabasas, CA, kind of a suburb of Los Angeles. The actual location is just one of many offices in an office complex consisting of many buildings. Probably occupied by a wide variety of businesses like accounting, insurance, whatever you can think of. There's nothing about Taxi on the outside. You don't see anything about Taxi until you're inside the building their office is located in, standing at their office door on the second floor (which also contains offices of other businesses). The impression is that they're doing just fine but it's obvious that one of the reasons they're doing just fine is that they don't waste money on "symbolism" (i.e. over-the-top fancy digs). It's a very comfortable place. (((Dave, you probably recall Michael pointing out that they are in a second tier office building for the neighborhood. It is still a far cry from sitting on a bed or a couch in an apartment, listening to a handful of songs that trickled in. There were only a couple of screeners back in those days, and I believe Michael was screening many submissions himself. John Brahaney was already around, helping Michael form up the philosophy that would become the Taxi we know today.)))After a little tour, one of the first things I did was to sit down with Chris Baptiste, one of the main guys. For all kinds of reasons, Taxi keeps track of everything under the sun regarding listings and submissions. My first question was "What are the most popular listing categories and what kind of submission activity is generated from these?"Generally speaking, the most submissions come from Singer/Songwriter and Country categories. I should define "Submissions" as "songs to be screened". For just about any listing in those categories there will be many hundreds of submissions per listing. It's not unusual for the number of submissions for a really attractive listing to be between 500 and 1,000. Since a lot of these really popular listings are "high bar", the number of forwards is very low. Easily under 50 and more likely something like 10 or less. These "high bar" listings are going to people like Faith Hill and they only want the best of the best of the best. Forwarding too many songs that don't meet this criteria (against the wishes of the listing company), and Taxi is off the "preferred vendor" list or whatever they call it. It's about the quality of the song (excluding production), not quantity or high production values on these kinds of things. BTW, the "Faith Hill Team" or their equivalent winds up with thousands of "best of the best of the best" music tracks, 10 and 15 at a time from all of their sources. I was told that for a recent album, Faith Hill's team started with 5300 pre-screened best of the best of the best, "10 and 15 at a time from various sources" music tracks. They whittled them down to something like 1,000 tracks. From there they whittled down to around 100 tracks, cutting some rough demos which got whittled down to something like the 12 tracks or whatever number made it onto the album. Two of the screeners chimed in that after all that, they didn't think the album was very good. Anyway, this is like a nearly 2 year process. This isn't mentioned for discouragement, just for an understanding of why all of your "high bar" submissions aren't forwarded and why, after 30 days, you still haven't gotten a "deal". By contrast, the number of submissions received for the now famous and rather bizarre "Armenian Pop/Rock/Electronica" listing was 26. However, because of the uniqueness of that listing, the only people submitting were those that really specifically tried and custom wrote for that and as a result, 13 tracks were forwarded. That's a 60%+ ratio for that (off the charts for Taxi) versus a 1% or less ratio for high bar SS/Country listings. Between these "extremes" lies the rest of the listings.The upshot is that a Singer/Songwriter or Country member submitting music can't compare their forward ratio to the forward ratio of someone submitting for basic film/tv ops, because it's apples and oranges. They also can't compare their deal ratio because of the same thing. There's only 12 slots on Faith Hill's album (not her album specifically but it's equivalent) but Fox Sports used 1.5 million tracks of music (or rather had 1.5 million slots available) last year for all of their productions combined. Each "Faith Hill Deal" might potentially be worth millions in performance royalties, whereas each "Fox Sports Deal" might be worth a couple hundred or maybe couple thousand in performance royalties. My basic observation is that submitting for film/tv listings in addition to submitting for high bar artist pitches might create some opportunities for yourselves to at least keep you in the game while waiting for "the big slam". For those of you that got forwarded on the "Armenian" thing, I was privy to some communication from the person who received those tracks and they were extremely impressed, almost shocked at the quality of the tracks. They said every one was useful, no "throw-aways". So... the usefulness of the music lasts for an entire season or longer (into subsequent seasons), not just one episode so let's keep our fingers crossed that they'll be used. That pretty much covers "The contrast between high bar artist pitches and common film/tv listings".Questions, comments or whatever will be promptly ignored answered. DaveSCREENER QUESTIONAIRE:I brought along a list questions to pry open the minds of the screeners on some issues I had wondered about. Ahem!QUESTION # 1. Do you ever listen to submissions more than once?The answer is a unanimous YES, i.e., according to all screeners that were asked. I had often wondered how they were able to glean so much information from a single pass (my naïve assumption) of a song. You may be relieved to know (I was) that a critique is often completed in multiple passes, with some skipping back and forth to sections of interest.Having now experienced screening and critiqueingTaxi style, I can testify that it would be difficult to meet Taxi’s tough guidelines, if confined to a single listen. Taxi imposes no time limit on its screeners, though they hope for a pace of six screens per hour, that being their break even point on screening, a goal that is almost met. I was not able to query every screener, so there may be some who have perfected their skills to the point they are able to do this—I just didn’t meet any who said so.These and many other guidelines were located in a handbook held within the inner company something like the recipe for Coca cola, but which Dave and I were privvy to examine, and which is mandatory reading for all screeners. It is something of a business model and an ethics model. Though not gererally available, it contains nothing you have not read elsewhere in the Taxi pages as piecemeal information. A certain style is required of a Taxi screener beyond all his or her impressive credentials. If a prospective screener is not able to dispense pertinent and practical suggestions on how to improve a returned piece, that is the same as not grasping the Taxi philosophy. The practice of seizing every opportunity to educate its membership opens up a deep gulf between Taxi and its so-called competitors, and screener comments are one of the main avenues it uses.QUESTION # 2. . Rank these reasons for return/s?A. poor vocals B. poor production C. Off target(By the way, my emphasis of study centered around the song pitch with particular interest in country, just to explain my…ahem!! screening credentials, but the questions were asked of screeners in general. Whereas Dave focused on film and library pitches).Back to question #2. The Coca cola recipe makes it clear that B is not an option in the case of a song pitch under the Taxi philosophy. If I substitute “construction” in place of “production” above, the question becomes more relevant. At least that is my impression. It is easy to see where I might get this idea, because a section on song construction and de-construction from a John Brahaney work is also required reading along with the recipe. Around Taxi John (Brahaney) enjoys Buddhistic status, and Michael (Laskow) is never slow to acknowledge his integral impact on the Taxi philosophy. It was my pleasure to meet John and be involved in a rather long discussion. More on this later.The answer to #2 was, by landslide, C., “off target,” though one screener did say “vocals.”I do not actually know if John is a screener for Taxi or not. His role may be more encompassing. But he is around the office from time to time. But in any case, the Taxi screening philosophy is steeped with his concept of a song, so it would probably serve members well to learn what that is. Michael calls him the godfather of song critiquing.(((He was screening that day because after spending all that time with us, after the whole office was gone, he (and Troy, the other screener we were talking to at the end of that day) had to tell Michael that they still hadn't clocked out yet. He screens every week, a couple of screening sessions a week.)))I can also throw this tidbit at you. In the course of critiquing one of my songs, he told me he has a pet peeve concerning syllables that are naturally unaccented ending up accented in a phrase because of the melody. After thinking about that for a while, I realized he was probably only telling me he didn’t like how I had done it, because it is pretty darned common, after all. That would be a very active pet peeve if he really has it. Notes like that pass by all the time without even being noticed. But when one does bother you, it really bothers you, is what he meant.