TAXI.com

Hello, please help me out if you can. MY song "The Northern Lights Are Singing" was returned for the following listing:HIP ELECTRONICA INSTRUMENTALS in the various styles of The Chemical Brothers, Jens Buchert, The Postal Service, Daft Punk, Groove Armada, etc., needed by a successful music studio that works on corporate documentaries for such clients as Adobe, Nikon, Wired and more. They want instrumentals that are positive, energetic and fresh. Non-exclusive deal with a $200 licensing fee paid to you each time your cue is placed. If they like your song, chances are good it'll get used many times over. Please, no uncleared samples and Broadcast Quality is needed (great sounding home recordings are fine). Please submit one to three instrumentals online or per CD. All submissions will be screened and critiqued by TAXI and must be received no later than Wednesday, September 2, 2009. TAXI #S090902ELYou can find the song on my taxi page (www.taxi.com/solardaze). I put it up in Peer to Peer and got great feedback with everyone saying they thought it was bang on for the listing.Now for the strange review, he had some issues with the melodies which I can accept however the following comments are very confusing:You could add more listener appeal if you thinned out the arrangement and put greater focus on using counter melodies that support your lead melodic themes.Also the synth sounds and loops at present, can feel thin and sequenced, you might consider adding sampled drum loops and instrumentals to the mix for a fatter/ richer feel along with updating your sound library so it feels more currentSo they are telling me to THIN OUT the arrangement in the first sentence. Second sentence, some of the sounds feel THIN and I need to make it sound fatter/richer. Huh???The knock on my synth sounds I totally disagree with as I used the latest KORG synth, so I can't bet more current. But perhaps he didnt like the sounds I chose which is fine. But I don't think they sound dated.Anyways, curious what people think about this and the song and the sounds. Thanks for letting me vent.

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I don't think you should get too tied up in the word "thin". From the way I interpreted this, it sounds like your arrangements are too busy, and it was recommended on using a catchy counter melody instead of trying to fill in too much of the "musical space".The second time they used "thin" it had to do with the sounds themselves. Sounds that are bright, percussive and choppy could be considered to not have much backbone. Sometimes it may help to just duplicate one of those sounds, reverse the phase and push it forward (or back) a couple thousanths of a beat. If you have a very bright or percussive lead synth for the arrangement, it could truthfully sound a bit twiggy. I tend to write a lot of sequences on my keyboard (Fantom X8), and then record those sequences as .wav files to the DAW. Just doing that seems to give them some meat.

I too got the return on this one. Although I didn't write the two songs I submitted SPECIFICALLY FOR this listing, I thought it was a shot at least as I do not listen to the artists referenced. My review was similar to yours. "use different sounds" "sounds dated"etc... A little irritating to say the least. I played your song and I do like the arrangement/sounds used. I like that kind of sound in electronic music. It is after all one persons opinion. I usually don't submit to lisintgs with the "a la's" listed. But the listings looking for "all styles of electronic" with no "a la's" are not as frequent as I'd like to see. What screener #? Keep writing/recording/submitting. Cheers.