2 hard reject

Don’t know why…

Do you like to travel:

First, the piano is problematic. Has no dynamics, too midi. And doesn’t sit in the mix.

Same for acoustic guitar. It is obvious that you don’t play guitar and don’t know the anatomy of guitar sound.

The lead synth sound is out of context.

And the mix has no low end and fullness…

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Hi @EvgenM,

Had a quick listen to these. Here are some notes I made:

Do You Like To Travel

Quite a few things I noticed that would suggest a rejection. It definitely needs some more work.

  • Chord progression needs more work. It doesn’t quite flow, and the chord at 0:09 sounds quite odd. Perhaps you could modify it a bit here. I think I get the mood and feeling you’re trying to convey, but it’s not sounding quite right in my opinion.

  • Piano arpeggio sounds lazy and robotic. Lacks variety in velocity (volume and note intensity) and sounds too perfect - perhaps try adding some subtle variations in the timing for a more organic feel.

  • The gated sawtooth sounds very out of place here. I’d either remove it or replace it with something softer and less chorusy / detuned.

  • Muted acoustic guitar strums need some bass frequencies taken out as the root tones are too distracting and compete with the rest of the harmony

  • The chorus section is better, but it needs a more prominent bass instrument to glue it all together

  • Bad guitar chord at 2:37. Doesn’t fit at all. Maybe this was a mistake?

Spring Sonata

This is a stronger track, but it still needs some work and I can understand why the reviewer didn’t let it through.

  • The ukulele VST sounds a little fake. I would replace it with a better sounding, more realistic library, or better yet, some real recordings. Ukuleles are very cheap and easy to play!

  • The cello / bass notes are a little too low pitch to sound harmonious with the rest of the track. I understand why you’ve put them there, but perhaps it can be replaced with something higher pitched like a violin.

  • Piano is a bit plastic and MIDI sounding. Maybe try a different VST or experiment with more variation in velocity.

Hope that helps!

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And yes.

Spring Sonata is much better as AurusAudio mentioned.
His recommendations are to the point.

Good luck.

Hey @EvgenM, great points from the guys above! I will add a note about reverb;

In Do You Like To Travel, I feel like one big problem is that none of the instruments sound like they belong together, and this is a lot to do with the reverb you have used.

The piano, synth and guitar have big hall reverbs, while the claps are completely dry. Then the finger clicks have a very strong and distinct room reverb. They all sound very separate.

I would remove all reverbs and start again from dry, and build up the reverbs so that all the instruments sound like they are in the same space. And subtle reverb is always best in general, in my opinion!

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I agree with @AurusAudio, quite nice explanation.

Maybe you should work first on “spring sonata”. I think you got less work there than on the first one.

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