Seeking feedback on Instrumental Themes?

[Ben2022n]

Hi everyone,

I'm new to Taxi. I'm trying to better understand instrumental cues. I listened to a bit of Taxi TV and did some Googling. One of the issues I'm a little stuck on is the concept of "theme". It's my understanding that there should be a single theme. Does that mean one chord pattern?

Have a listen to these two tracks I put together today:

https://www.taxi.com/members/j2ThoSyUSG ... ental-cue-

https://www.taxi.com/members/j2ThoSyUSG ... ental-cue-

If the links don't work you can listen on my website:
https://www.projectintrinsic.com/instrumentals

I'm considering submitting these to the funk listing titled "Lots of FUNK INSTRUMENTAL CUES are needed..."

My question is whether I have too much going on in my tracks. Are there too many changes; too many themes?

Many thanks,

Ben

[cosmicdolphin]

Your links don't work for others, you need to find the post that tells you how to share them correctly

[Ben2022n]

Thanks for letting me know. I couldn't find the post you're referring to.

The tracks were not "Public". I made them public now so hopefully that worked and you can view them.

[cosmicdolphin]

Thanks for letting me know. I couldn't find the post you're referring to.

The tracks were not "Public". I made them public now so hopefully that worked and you can view them.

Still not working. You can test them from an incognito window in your browser. I only ever use Soundcloud sorry I don't know the answer but it's been mentioned like hundreds of times around here.

[Casey H]

This seems to be a chronic problem- people have trouble posting links to their songs from their Taxi page. I know there's a video about it somewhere here but... If you look at your song on your profile, it says "Share with Collaborators:" and under that are a bunch of icons. The first one on the left, an image of a chain link, will copy a link to the song to the clipboard and you can paste it anywhere from there. If this still gives you trouble, yea, get a free soundcloud account and use that.

[Ben2022n]

Thank you very much for the instructions. I did what you suggested. Hopefully the links work now. If they don't, you can have a listen to the tracks on my website:

https://www.projectintrinsic.com/instrumentals

I'm fairly tech savvy so if I have had trouble with this issue it's not surprising that others have had the same issue. It's clearly a feature of this forum that can be improved. Hopefully Taxi does something about that.

[cosmicdolphin]

I'm considering submitting these to the funk listing titled "Lots of FUNK INSTRUMENTAL CUES are needed..."

It's usually best to copy & paste the listing into your post so we don't have to go searching for it and can quickly listen to the reference tracks.

I've had a lisen to the 2 tracks on your website, but they are nothing like the tracks asked for in the listing. There's none of that 70s vibe in your tracks to my ears so although I think they are okay , they would be returned for being stylistically off target if I was the screener.

I suspect you already had these tracks? Writing to the listings is usually a much better bet for getting forwarded.

Mark

[Ben2022n]

Thanks for the feedback.

Here's the listing: https://www.taxi.com/industry#listing-S220418NK

I interpreted it pretty liberally. I might have placed too much emphasis on "with modern elements and ideas" and "There's room to get pretty creative with this request – just make sure your tracks got the funk!"

[cosmicdolphin]

Thanks for the feedback.

Here's the listing: https://www.taxi.com/industry#listing-S220418NK

I interpreted it pretty liberally. I might have placed too much emphasis on "with modern elements and ideas" and "There's room to get pretty creative with this request – just make sure your tracks got the funk!"

Thanks, it really helps get more feedback if you actaually copy/paste the listing text into your first post. They sound too modern to me and refs have a defeinte retro 70s feel but see what others think

[myk247365]

Ben,

These are really good tracks. But I wouldn't call them funk. You have some funk elements, the staccato guitar, the bass is active in some parts etc... But I don't think these would get forwarded on that listing. And I say that as someone who has gotten far more returns than forwards...

Listen to the references again with these ideas in mind:
What is the bass doing? holding a note for a measure? arpeggiating the chord? what are the rhythms like, long-short long-short or short-long etc. One of the key things in funk is the slap-pluck, where the thumb slaps a low note and the fore/middle fingers pluck an octave higher in an alternating fashion, the rhythms between the two notes can get quite complex. The articulation of this technique is crucial, so make sure you have an instrument patch that is designed to play this way.

Then listen to the drums. Where in the measure is the bass drum playing, is it with the bass, or played as a counter rhythm(filling in where the bass doesn't play). Where are the snare drum "ghost" notes? these are very soft compared to the accent on two and four. If you are using a computer generated track(i.e. Logic Pro X Drummer track) make sure the track is set to add ghost notes. Convert the track to MIDI and go through and make sure the ghost notes occur consistently in each measure.

The guitar technique you use is good, but could be even more staccato and EQ'd to emphasize the high end even more. Also consider adding a wah-wah effect, but just a little to add spice, too much and you wind up in XXX territory...

Record yourself clapping to each beat of the reference track(just your claps), then create a tempo map from your recording and use that as a click track while you're recording. This will give you a feel/groove that is similar to the reference track.

You have some very busy synth sounds. I would refrain from those unless the references include things like that. The hard panned fast arpeggiated thing in the second half of your second track was very distracting, and all this film/TV stuff has one goal: set the mood without distracting from the dialog.

Hope this helps.

Michael