After having both of my first submissions rejected, I thought I’d post my latest track here BEFORE submitting!
I feel that this song sounds good enough, and flows well, but i thought that about my first two lol
Any advice you can give would be warmly received,
Thanks,
Ally
https://soundcloud.com/ally-music-957987500/summer-inspiration
It sounds ok to me.
But again, you’ll never know …
Thanks for replying. I checked out your tracks ~ they sound great! What’s your secret for such great sounding acoustic guitar and ukulele? 
Nice track but there are a couple of issues to my ears that, if addressed, would make this a very good track. I would consider it for cruise/travel videos.
First, the shaker suffers from some combing. Not sure if that is intentional but I would go with a more traditional sounding shaker/maraca sound. As it is, it is a bit distracting. I would also consider bringing the volume on it down a bit.
I would consider a beat of silence followed by a kick in to the main theme.
While I know that delay and reverb are part of the summer sound, I think you might have a bit much going on here. It sounds great on the mallet keyboard sound and the lead synth, but I might consider toning down on the snare. I think there are too many elements with noticeable reverb on them and the mix loses clarity.
Hope this helps. Nice work.
It sounds good and it should be accepted. Im just getting distracted by the hihat/shaker. It is too focused on the 10 or 12k range (too bright). Its my opinion but If it make sense to you you could try turning down a couple of dBs the elements that live in that area or find your way EQ’ing that out. I hope this helps.
the secret is : Listening, listening and listening 
Thanks so much for your reply. Now that you’ve pointed out the shakers I can’t un-hear it ~ very distracting lol
You’re absolutely right. I’ve pulled down some of 10-12k range and it sounds way better. Thanks so much