Ambient Piece got rejected, feedback pls

Hello everyone!

Recently I wrote an ambient piano piece and thought it was ok. And again I received a hard reject for “not meeting quality standards”/ Now I really don’t have any idea why this happened. Could you please help me and give your feedback?
Track is here

Hi.
Your piece seems fine. I would question the selection of synths used as they sound a little stale and dated. The piano and violin? sound nice.
Try changing a few of the sounds maybe. The reverb/release of the main riff leaves the piece sounding very muddy. maybe chose a slightly more dynamic sound with a little more attack and a quicker decay, you could still add a good bit of reverb to it to have the same effect but without sounding so flat or dead.
Just a few ideas

Thank you, really appreciate your help!

The main idea is nice, but the synth arpegio that we hear during the whole piece is a bit repetitive and flat/dull… Maybe it should evolve with filters, to give it more dynamism.
Ambient means calm and quiet, but here this arpegio somehow stresses me a bit, at the end it can even drive me mad :slight_smile: No I am joking, but I am sure this can be improved.

On a positive note, I love your violin!! And the overall composition is fine I think.

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Thank you for your response:). So my main problems are repetitiveness and lack of dynamics…

I thought it was great. I think you could take some of the advice on the progression of the ostinato with filters etc as sound. But personally, I think it’s great - I’d have let it in :slight_smile: I mean you can’t really call repetitive minimalism too minimalistic and repetitive can you!? Good job, I enjoyed listening to your track!

Thank you for the kind words megatalented

Sometimes I just think I’m too obsessed with minimalism:).

No worries. Because I’m doing some head scratching also, I listened to your track again and tried to second guess their judgement. I wonder if the piece had some subtle ‘real’ strings and/or choir backing it up, that took it from an obvious synthesized piece (albeit very good) to something that sounded more like an organic recording, whether that would change your chances. I’m getting the impression that if music sounds like it could be recreated on an iPad they’re not interested. All guess-work of course, because I liked the track, I’m just trying to get into the head of a AJ reviewer! They must get a tremendous amount of ‘midi’ tracks to turn down.

I also think now that the problem is in its “synthsized” quality. Melodic stuff is good but this track lacks dynamics and some developement. And I could use softer limiting too.