Help on understanding the feedback for a Dark Tension Instrumental listing

[hubert]

Hey guys,

I got a fairly good number of tracks forwarded recently (yay!) as well as a healthy amount of returns (about 50/50). For most of the returns I fully understand why the track was returned. I'm a little confused however with two tracks that I submitted for a "Dark Tension Instrumental" listing.

Here is the listing: https://www.taxi.com/listings/S240615DK

Here are my two tracks:
https://www.taxi.com/members/cezSk9GdRw ... -situation
https://www.taxi.com/members/cezSk9GdRw ... ark-alleys

Most of the successes I've had so far have been by following the reference tracks very closely (instrumentation, style, mood, vibe, etc.). In this case all three reference tracks are quite bare and don't evolve much. So that's what I followed.

For both of my tracks however I got the same feedback from the screener: "The style and vibe are suitable for the listing. It would be great to have some more atmospheric sections like the intro, and also change things up a bit more after about a minute in."

This doesn't make much sense to me based on the reference tracks, which hardly change at all. My best guess is that I would need to add an edit point. Because the requirements was 1.5 minutes long and the reference tracks were so continuous, I decided not to include edit points this time. I assume that's the mistake here.

Would I be correct in my assumption or is there anything else that I am perhaps missing? I would be grateful for any feedback so that I can learn from this and further refine my future submissions.

Thanks a bunch!

[RealPickle]

Hey man,

So I had almost the exact same issue with this exact listing.
(My returned track in case you care: https://www.taxi.com/members/AtDl-WGNQ2 ... g-bad-omen)

I actually wrote in about it because it seemed crazy to me that one of the references doesn't develop, like, at all, and as you said, the others are pretty repetitive and simple as well. The answer I got was basically that you have to combine the references with the brief. So in this case the brief called for "layers, forward motion, and dynamics" so even though the references had little or none of that, you have to take the instrumentation/vibe from the references but build your track out more than they do. I don't think an edit point is so much the issue in this case.

Certainly feels like a needle in a haystack sometimes! But I hope that helps.

[hubert]

Thanks for the reply, that's super useful to know!

Interesting, until now I completely followed the references, as I assumed it illustrated what the client was after. It never occured to me that the brief would not follow them!

Great cue by the way, I would have never in a million years predicted this would be returned - again, based on the references.

Well, that's a good lesson for next time.

[RealPickle]

Interesting, until now I completely followed the references, as I assumed it illustrated what the client was after. It never occured to me that the brief would not follow them!

Same. I usually pick one or two as inspiration and try to base my track on it/them. Gonna have to revise that!

And thanks. Mine was particularly frustrating because the screener even said "this could work" in their feedback...then returned it

Ah well. On to the next one!

[hubert]

Mine was particularly frustrating because the screener even said "this could work" in their feedback...then returned it

I hear you! I got "The style and vibe are suitable for the listing"
I was just out of a nice streak of 5 forwards in a row and naively thought I had nailed the process

But as you said, on to the next one!

[AlanHall]

...until now I completely followed the references, as I assumed it illustrated what the client was after. It never occured to me that the brief would not follow them!

I have to confess that I'm with the two of you on following the references or, as in this case, being confused by them! I got 2 out of 2 for this listing returned for similar reasons, because I went with the 'simplicity' of the ref tracks and ignored the brief. I'm starting to think that the listing is king and that the ref tracks carry much less weight when evaluating the submissions. I've been using the ref tracks as a sort of crutch, and it may have hindered rather than helped! I'd like to have ML and his publishing department - whoever writes the briefs and assigns the music - discuss the listing creation process on Taxi TV.

[RealPickle]

...until now I completely followed the references, as I assumed it illustrated what the client was after. It never occured to me that the brief would not follow them!

I have to confess that I'm with the two of you on following the references or, as in this case, being confused by them! I got 2 out of 2 for this listing returned for similar reasons, because I went with the 'simplicity' of the ref tracks and ignored the brief. I'm starting to think that the listing is king and that the ref tracks carry much less weight when evaluating the submissions. I've been using the ref tracks as a sort of crutch, and it may have hindered rather than helped! I'd like to have ML and his publishing department - whoever writes the briefs and assigns the music - discuss the listing creation process on Taxi TV.

I think it's natural, and human nature, to follow the references. It's much easier as musicians to imagine a piece based on other actual music than on descriptions of music.

What's hard is I've had a couple returns where the screener points to the reference tracks like "you needed to do this", and others where they focus in on one or two things in the brief. It's tough to know for sure what reigns supreme.

And to be brutally honest, it seems to me that the screener for this particular listing doesn't listen to the references at all.

[hubert]

Just to add to my non-understanding of the feedback: I've just listened to all the tracks that were forwarded for this listing, and pretty much without exception they sound very much like the reference tracks.
I'm all for constructive feedback, but at least it should be consistent. In this case the return/forward decision is hard to figure out