PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production No more 'One and Done' Vocal recordings for me

Just received a Taxi rejection for a placement entry I made and the song had been held well beyond the cutoff date and also beyond their normal 30 days to get a reply date.

From the rejection letter: The music (BIAB RealTracks) and lyrics was authentic to the genre and representative of what the client was seeking for a placement in a movie. My vocals needed more warmth and some pitch correction and appears to have been the deciding factor to not getting this song placement.

This Vocal recording was a one take, no punch-ins, no phrase corrections, recorded with reverb during the take with the cheapest mic I have and in a room with no type of treatment. A complete 'one and done'.

I didn't take my work as a serious means to earn income and sold myself short. I submitted it on the spur of the moment and had no confidence it would ever receive serious consideration.

Oops. It's not better luck next time for me. It's up my game and try to output quality workmanship. You only have to get it right once but how many times will once come around?

Be smart with your music.

Charlie,

Dust yourself off and get back at it. Writing for spec is the hardest thing to do. At least you got a rejection letter.



Regards,


Bob

Wow Charlie,

Sorry you didn't get a placement but you did get some good feedback and a wake-up call. Now, get in it to win it!

Charlie,

That's a very impressive accomplishment!

All the best with next time.
Noel

Thanks for sharing; good lesson .. glad you learned from it.

Second time around with Taxi and in my third year this go around so I've had more than a few rejection letters. Most generic, unmeaningful and such. This one seemed to have more depth, you know, like they would actually have picked this one if they could. Yep, I'll dust off and start writing instrumentals.... Got if all figgered this time ;=)

you got it. Upping my game..... Maybe

Thanks Noel. I must say, I do have a pretty impressive rejection list.....

I appreciate your continued support.

Thanks. must find a way to change learned to earned......

It actually was a lesson to share and I want to encourage the folks here to believe in themselves and the first step is to treat your work like someone will really be listening to it.

Charlie.... Indeed.... there's one thing you absolutely must keep in mind when you submit to any music library or commercial end user. The song you send in is going to be used exactly like you send it in the final video production. They're not going to have another group of musicians record it again, and they're not going to take the time to send it back to you saying they really love the song and could you please fix the vocals or the out of tune guitar..... nope, they're going to deep six it and pick another song that does sound professional in every way.

Taxi generally returns 90% of the music submitted for one reason or another. Rainy Day on my music page was one such return. The review said the music was professional, the lyrics nailed the requested scene in the movie. The screener even asked.... "you wrote this for this listing, didn't you?" (yes I did) .... the style is ballad rock and they wanted more of an indy-rock groove. It was a 3 day turnaround. Close deadline and I spent a lot of time on it to get in before the deadline. The screener even said in the review that I "nailed it". I appealed it but the head of screening at taxi agreed that the song was "spot on" but the wrong style and they didn't want to send songs, no matter how well it fit the lyrical aspect of the listing, if the producer didn't want anything outside of his requested musical style risking their relationship with that producer.... so it was a return.

I had about a 90% return rate, which is average, from what I hear. The forwards all ended up in digital oblivion. I did get one really nice A-list library out of it..... but that library never placed the songs and didn't communicate well. Other taxi folks told me the library was a good one. I guess that's their opinion.

I quit using Taxi for a variety of reasons and started using other libraries I found on my own. My placements in TV and film have come from the ones I have found on my own.

But yeah, back to the topic.... the music you send has to be top bar stuff. If you don't have the time to punch out the mistakes or pitch correct the vocal track, don't send it. Taxi will return it. If you are dealing with a publisher or a library, the president or the screener there will not have a very high opinion of your work and will tend to set your stuff on the side to be reviewed only if they can't find what they need (if at all) in the other songs presented. In other words, you get a bad reputation quickly for sending in less than usable music, and that's hard to recover from.

A number of the libraries I use now, had a screener listen to 2 examples of the music I write, record, and produce. Some of them took me several attempts to get the quality up enough to be accepted. There's a lot of really talented people out here writing music for film and TV. With the advent of home studios and really good gear becoming affordable, the quality bar has been raised to stratospheric levels in this area. That alone is making it harder and harder to get placements. Factor the sheer number of songs being submitted for consideration on each listing, and you begin to see that this is hard work.

I still use a few lower cost alternatives than TAXI. No membership and just pay $6 per submission. The more you submit to them, the more listings they send to you to choose from. Another is only $5/mo and I can unsubscribe any time I want.... or submit as many songs as I want. I get emails for new listings on a daily basis. I pick the ones I think are a good fit. Just got an exclusive publishing offer for some of my tunes from that one.

Look around and see if you can land a few other libraries on your own before the TAXI subscription comes up for renewal again.

Great advice Herb and your numbers track closely to what I've found. Sounds for sure you've been in my shoes before.

Despite the rejection, at least it seems like they had some significant feedback. Much better than the blunt dismissal I think all musicians have received at some point or another. Keep truckin' on

I agree Deryk. I'm use to the generic don't fit the vibe, groove or genre rejections. This recording could have been better and wasn't because I recorded the vocal in one take with little processing and no vocal punch in to correct minor pitch error. It's a bummer but I honestly deserved the rejection.

I shared hoping others will recall my story and put the effort into their entire song and not be slack like I was

Fair warning to everyone we can't ride to success solely on the professional results we can now obtain with BIAB/RB generated tracks.... ;=)

Could be they are giving constructive criticism because they view you as a future resource and want to keep you on their list of potentials for future projects. Sounds to me that they liked something about your writing, lyrics, arrangement, style, etc... "the music and lyric was authentic to..." Apparently, I'm speculating, you hit on most of attributes they were looking for in the instruments selected. The vocal is always the most criticized part of a song. Perhaps choosing the appropriate vocalist would make a difference also. I put my own voice on songs I arrange for other song writers with the suggestion of what type of vocalist might work best if they are pitching the song. But, they most often pitch them with my sample vocal/voice or their own voice which, in my opinion is not always the best way to go.
Anyway, how to I/we get to hear it? Do you have a link?

You are right on the mark on every point Tobias. There are several points about vocals. One, vocals are the most difficult instrument to record. Much about recording good vocals is subjective. A quick comparison between vocalists such as Michael Buble and Joe Cocker or Celion Dion and Stevie Nicks who all have achieved great success as vocalists but there are great variances in their performances. Don Felder performed in the best selling vocal band of the 20th century but he's self professed and unchallenged by the experts, to be at best, an average vocalist.

When it comes to recording with BIAB, there are many possible weak links to getting a professional sounding final product but the weakest possible link is vocal recordings. The 'Band in the Box' in our computer gives us the world class, professional session musicians playing quality instruments through quality gear into a quality recording. It's a near perfect recording environment. From that point forward, it becomes what we do with this tool we have that makes the difference between success and failure. The product is no longer dependent on the instrumentation performance, however, the composition,arrangement, mix, production and performance relies on the ability, environment, post production gear, experience and work ethic of the person using the BIAB software. The actual quality of the final recording depends on what happens out of the box. Every Band in a Box owner/user begins a project on a level playing field with the Band in a Box software.

I knew the song I submitted to Taxi was authentic to the genre. It's a genre I've been around and performed my entire life. I knew the lyrics were good enough as they were extensively discussed in detail and reviewed here on the forum. All of the music was generated in BIAB and I know my way around the program well enough to create a professional sounding, radio quality performance track. What I did not do was properly finish off the project in a manner equal to the quality of the write and performance track.

My One and Done title for this thread is my recognition of understating the importance of the quality of an entire project and not relying on the strength of other elements to carry a project to success.

The song I submitted was put into the User Forum well before I submitted it to Taxi. Here is a link to the song:

My Sad Story

when you're paying the high subscription cost for TAXI.... you do expect to get some feedback on the song tucked into that price.

They will often tell you that a certain listing is Yes/No... so you don't really expect feedback on those.

Indeed.... those tracks are excellent starting places BUT.... they need some effort on your part to get them sounding "broadcast ready".

I remember when you posted that song, Charlie. Several of us left complimentary remarks on the Soundcloud line.
With respect to broadcast television, though, it is kind of graphic for mass appeal. It's a small bullseye, but that's what success stories are made of.

Check out Songtradr. Free and a great business model. I think their approach is unique.

It is truly a small bullseye. I've quoted my late brother many times his encouragement to me that I only have to get it right once. I hope I don't run out of bullets.