Jazz Piece: Disappointing

This is a jazz piece I wrote after failing my drive test 3 times (I'm a pretty bad driver). I'm playing piano and the synth versions of the other instruments. Xavier del Castillo is on sax. Here's the song: http://lzr.cc/music/dissa.mp3 .

Although Jazz is not really my thing, I found it a fine example of late night music. However you are asking for trouble by naming it "disappointing".

I like it. Sax little louder in mix but really nice.

Leeran,

Great tune here....the changes are really nice and the melody is fantastic - the off-beats do well to drive the energy, as does the rhythmic motif.

The sax player is pretty good and the overall level of playing (as I understand from your ebsite, you're playing everything else?) is fantastic.

Well done - you're 17? Keep working, you'll be KILLING in a couple years. Are you planning on continuing jazz piano as a career?

oh nice. im loving this one. something on the forum you can dance to. =)

These jazzy piano chords right at the beginning are just the thing i love about jazz.

If you manage to make the whole thing sound a little softer, then please let me know.

Thanks for all the comments guys. I'm actually 18 now, though I was either 17 or 16 when I wrote/recorded the song. I took my first drive test when I was 16 but I'm pretty sure it took enough tries that I was still making attempts by the time I turned 17. Are there any other composers/musicians on this forum who have extreme difficulty with driving/directions?

I don't think I want to rely only on jazz professionally, but I'd like to continue doing gigs and combos for fun. I've been doing a lot of the "lounge"y, nordstrom-piano kind of playing for parties lately, which is pretty fun, but a little boring. As far as making it sound softer, I guess you could try turning down the volume :P

Hey I really like this. I think the your performer has a very nice, warm tone to his playing which is very well suited to your piece. Very controlled. I would always be tempted to lose it and start dominating with crazy runs and loads of hight notes with plenty of vibrato. Actually i'm writing this WHILST listening... liking it more and more. Well done! Please keep it up and keep experimenting and keep your sax player :-)

Very nice. Great sax and piano playing. Nice composition. I like your harmony and chord changes.

I recommend that you track down a percussionist. The synth percussion is distracting--the tone is grating and the performance unimaginative. You have so much talent as a composer and performer, why undermine that by messing around with things that aren't your forte? Concentrate on your strengths.

I'm enjoying this--good work. I second the idea of working with a live percussionist, even if you bring him or her in after you've got the entire piece sequenced to replace or augment your sampled percussion parts. The comment about the loudness was probably referring to the production, which sounds fairly compressed--too compressed for me, for jazz at least. The piano is enormous in the mix--listen to some great jazz recordings and get some perspective on how the piano sounds on those (this production style is closer to the dreaded 'smooth jazz'). Try Brad Mehldau's Art of the Trio Volume 3.

I used to listen to jazz a lot and this reminded me what it feels like. I really enjoyed it and you two are great players.

Anyway, well done and I hope you feel better about the tests now :)