TAXI.com

Hi all,

It seems to me that more and more listings are demanding live players in their listings. One such is for Irish music: TAXI # Y110617IR, where they say, "no midi programming of ethnic instruments." I've already spent quite a few bucks hiring instrumentalists for various Taxi submissions and, as I am pretty new to this business, I'm still waiting to find out whether my "investments" have paid off. (I haven't heard back from any of the libraries that I've been forwarded to.)

In any case, I would like to submit some of my Irish tunes for this listing. The fiddles and penny whistles are real, but the Irish pipes are not. I think the tracks sounds pretty darn authentic, and frankly, I'm not sure whether it's worth it to fork out another two or three hundred dollars to hire a piper. I'm wondering what your experiences are about these sort of listings--do these libraries really expect us to fork out a couple hundred bucks per track on live instruments or are they just making it clear that they want absolutely real sounding mockups. I'd love to hear your experiences and insights in this area.

BTW, the tracks in question are:

The Battle of the Boyne March
Who'll Pay the Piper
Livin' the Life O'Reilly

Thanks for your advice and input,

Vince

http://taxi.com/vincentrusso

Vince,

If it sounds real, who cares if it was programmed? I think what they are saying is "please don't use cheesy samples played with over-quantized MIDI programming". We all know that there are some fantastic samples out there and in the right hands very convincing tracks can be made with them. Your Irish tracks sound great, I'd be submitting them all over the place!!

That's how I read it!

Thanks Mazz. That's the answer I was hoping for! And thanks for the compliment .

I agree. If it sounds real that's the important thing. What they don't want is the obviously midi stuff.

Play it like a real piper would play it and use samples that are top quality, and have all the subtleties of a real performance.

On one of my tracks, a reviewer commented that they could hear the sounds of the bow on the strings of the fiddle...... it was midi with a sample. If it's that real sounding, it will pass muster (fool) all but the most discerning of ears....and they will probably wonder a bit.