TAXI.com

Here's a new, Taxi forum improved version of this tune if anyone is curious.

Hi all - I'm going to submit this to a publisher I met at the Rally. He digs my stuff but fears he'll have trouble placing my more singer/songwriter style tunes. He said if I can come up with fuller band arrangements of slow build, emo, falsetto kinda Coldplay style pop tunes he'd love to hear it. Lyrical themes include rising above, tomorrow, belief, or something unobtainable or just out of reach.

Anyway, I'm hoping he digs this but I wanted to get some feedback on the mix if anyone has a sec.

Thanks so much!

eo

http://soundcloud.com/ethan-okamura/better-man

I think it's great stuff.
Maybe it I could have more dynamics to be more contemporary to some ears , but that does not nessecarily make it better. It had enough development ant interesting stuff that it had my full attention all the time .
Thanks for the listen

Ethan .. Love the guitar sound .. what is that?/ really cool. Man I love your voice too.. really feel it. you know what would be cool.. put a slight echo reverb on the voice at 1:50... . Really great stuff here .. If I had any freakin money I'd buy your stuff.. Big Fan here.
Tom

Ethan, I think this has a lot of potential. Some very nice and appealing chord changes and guitar stuff. If you're looking to go down the Coldplay, anthemic, epic route then I suggest bringing the drums and bass more to the forefront. The guitars are nice and the voice is sweet but the drums, to my ear, are a bit too laid back and have more of an Americana sound to them. I think getting much more of a kicking kick and a bigger snare would make this soar.

Check out the drums in these two songs. This is the kind of thing that I would do if it was me.

http://youtu.be/E5zTuVhNs5c

http://youtu.be/yEoHFzEmld0

Hope this helps!

Mark

Thanks for the listen all! Tom, the guitars are through the Eleven rack from Avid, pretty much stock presets with some minor tweaks, guitar is a G&L ASAT (Tele). Glad you like the tones!

Yeah Mark, drums are a weak spot for me, i don't have the patience but I need to improve my chops in that area. Love that Coldplay tune, thanks for the links!

eo

Hi there,

I think you nailed the request and then some! This sounds great! I am new here so I have been listening to a lot of people's material and this caught my ear. I could hear a build up to some distortion or to some more intensity or maybe a little faster to get some of the same effect but thats just two ways of presenting the song. Love it!

Jason

This is a lot better than you think bud.

One tends to believe when you sing. Lots of passion.

Film, film, film:)

Paul

Hey eo, this sounds really great! I do agree with Mark about the drums and bass, but yeah, this seems to be on the right track. I think the vocal sounds really good but I'd like to hear more verb or just a little delay on it, you know me.

The wife and I were catching up on some "Chuck" episodes last week and a song came on in the background, it was quiet and before the vocal even cam in I thought immediately of you and how cool it would be if you were singing it I did some digging and found the track, it's by "The One AM Radio", I really think you should do one along these lines, really cool sounds going on with awesome drums and bass, here's the vid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLjjNPGVS2w

Best,
Marc

Thanks for the listen fellas! Interesting you want the vocal wetter Marc, I've been worried it's too wet, but when you work on something for so many hours straight i think you go kinda nuts...

okay, drums and bass, got it. Maybe that should be my new years resolution, learn how to make my drums and bass rock!

Thanks again!

eo

Sounds good to me, but I thought this was Emo music (so what do I know):
http://soundcloud.com/sesamestreetmusic/elmo-says-boo

Stuart