TAXI.com

I write what some call smooth jazz and contacted taxi about joining. It was suggested that I ask for your opinion about some of my tracks. Any thoughts?


http://soundcloud.com/ricchi

For sure. Just listened and LOVE your music.

http://www.getsaltmusic.com

Thank you. It can be confusing sometimes.

I really loved "Chances Are". The other ones sounded a little Midi-ish, but they were nice compositions. I definitely think you should join.

"Chances Are" is from my CD. The others are from Finale. Thanks for the reply

Will any of them work as background music that has nothing to do with jazz?

Rich,

The first piece on your SoundCloud site, Chances Are, is obviously recorded with live players. For jazz, that's probably a must to get past the screeners or the music supervisors. Jazz is just extremely hard to do with MIDI, as you probably already know!

Your other pieces, at least to my ears, suffer from fairly low production values. You mention you generated them from Finale and if you use the soundsets that come with any of the Notation programs, you are probably not going to generate "broadcast quality" productions.

These days, "production music" and "library music", which is a lot of what is used in broadcast and other uses, is of much higher quality than it was in the 80s when there were fewer libraries and early MIDI productions were still fairly primitive sounding.

I suggest you peruse the "Forwards" section of the forum and listen to the instrumental music that makes it through and really compare your production quality to the quality of what is getting forwarded.

I'm not trying to discourage you from joining Taxi, I'm just encouraging you to give yourself a reality check. Of course, a benefit of Taxi is the learning that you get from the feedback, so that's a plus. You can also subscribe to the listings and then try to write for them and post your pieces here in Peer to Peer and get feedback on them based on the specific listing. That's always really helpful.

I have a jazz background too and I've found it to be very helpful in my composing and I'm sure you have the chops in that regard, but it's important to remember that these days we are expected to deliver the entire production so it can be dropped right into a TV show or film and be used "as is". Almost no publishers except for the very high end ones (which take a long time of relationship building to get into), will take your piece and re-record it with live players. Since there are so many folks out there that have great chops in not only composing but also in producing a high quality finished product basically in their home studios, the bar is pretty high. It helps to find out what that bar is and where you stand in relationship to it.

So do a little more research here before you decide to join, IMO.

HTH,

Mazz

Mazz,

Thanks for the reveiw. They need to be reproduced. My main concern is if the melody will sell in some format other than jazz.


Ric

Rich,

I think the melodies are pretty nice. I'd like to hear them when you re-produce them, sometimes the context you put them in and the arrangement can also make a difference.

Good luck, looking forward to hearing more!

Mazz