TAXI.com

I had been working this cue up for a previous Americana brief but ended up missing the deadline by a minute (AT&T internet sucks around here and it's the only viable option). So I reworked it a bit and submitted it to this Americana brief S210328AM even though the references were totally different than the brief I missed.

I'm a little surprised it made the cut to be honest, because I spent most of the afternoon/night recording new layers and only had 30 minutes to wrap up the new mix (and mixing at the end of a long day is never a good idea). There were a bunch of mix and/or arrangement moves I still wanted to make and I had to skip the checking it on different systems step. In short, I was confident in the song, but not super confident in the mix or arrangement. The screener apparently kinda agreed, saying the mix might need a little reworking/cleaning up (percussion might be too cluttered for dialogue) but it was close enough to forward.

Hopefully the client will see it the same way, and in the meantime, I'm gonna clean the low end in the mix up a bit , do some underdubbing, some more automation and try to get it where I had envisioned.

https://soundcloud.com/vince-johnston-2 ... ing-210328

One of my partners handled the drums, another played bass and piano, and i did the rest. I had just fixed up an old Silvertone lapsteel somebody gave me. And never having played one before, I couldn't help but make the rookie mistake of putting it on wax, lol. Luckily, it didn't bite me in the bum... yet.

Nice work! I like the vibe right away...sort of like an early morning working outdoors on the ranch...

Congrats... Nicely done... good edit points in there and loving the other tracks on SoundCloud. Keep up the excellent work!

Really lovely!! I enjoyed this. Congrats on the forward!

I wanted to post an update on this forward from about 6 months ago, because it's led to the best (i.e. most lucrative) connection we've made through Taxi yet. The client reached out to us a month after the forward saying they liked the track and asking if we'd be interesting in writing some similar but shorter cues to briefs for a couple specific TV shows. They offered a sort of work-for-hire deal, where they'd pay us an advance ($150 with an occasional $200) per track and in return we'd give them 100% publishing and 50% writer's share. Sure, we'd rather maintain 100% ownership of all the rights to all of our music, but considering we are still trying to get our foot in the door, our 1st placement and our 1st check, we said why not? What's the point of being so precious about everything if most of it's just going to sit on a hard drive anyway, or at best unstreamed on Spotify? Let's just write some new stuff for the client and see what happens.

So they sent some basic references for upbeat, folk, pop, bluegrass type stuff and we went to work starting in May. In the 4 months since we've done 24 cues for 3 different TV shows. Usually they request a batch of 4-6 tracks at a time. We submit for the client's approval, then they send it for the network's approval, and once all that's cleared we bounce the final mix along with a bunch of alt mixes and stems and then we get paid the advance.

Of the 24 we submitted and had screened by both the client and the network, they've accepted them all and only asked for revisions to 2 of the tracks...nixing the strings in one, and adding a better "stinger" ending on another one. Compare that to our (one screener) Taxi rate which is 48 submission and 14 forwards. Hopefully this can serve as a little inspiration to Taxi members disgruntled (like I've often been) with their forward rate. Don't assume a 70% rejection rate on Taxi means you can expect to hear "no" 70% of the time when dealing with actual clients. And in our case at least so far, the "no's" just meant do a simple revision and we'll take it.

And this isn't a shot against Taxi. Hell, this is me saying Taxi, with all of its flaws, works. In the year and 3 months since joining Taxi we've made a little over $3,500 (all in the last 4 months) from this one connection alone. Sure, it's not big money, and the backend probably won't be all that great, but it covers the 2 years of Taxi membership fees. And it pains me to say this, but it's already more than my band made in 6 years off of 2 albums.

Anyway, I remember when we were looking at joining Taxi I checked the forum for real world examples trying to decide if Taxi really worked or if it was a scam. So I figured if anybody's looking at the forum right now trying to decide if they should give Taxi a shot this might be helpful.

Here are a few of the 24 cues we submitted. I'll probably keep them online for a little while if anybody's interested in hearing any examples.

https://soundcloud.com/vince-johnston-2 ... a_110_amaj
https://soundcloud.com/vince-johnston-2 ... r-and-pull
https://soundcloud.com/vince-johnston-2 ... crows-nest
https://soundcloud.com/vince-johnston-2 ... ve-seconds
https://soundcloud.com/vince-johnston-2 ... ouble-down
https://soundcloud.com/vince-johnston-2 ... easy-peasy