Here is my first attempt, that was rejected. It would be so helpful if Envato would take 1 second to tick a box to give people a clue of the problem after days of hard work composing.
There wasn’t much mastering or mixing to do, it’s just a simple piano composition I wrote with 2 tracks. Maybe not the sort of thing that’s wanted? Who knows.
Solo Piano tracks are not quite right according to AJ regulations.Most probably this is the main reason for rejection.
Thank you Soundtrickz. I had read that too, but then found some solo piano tracks by others recently accepted, so I thought I’d take the risk. I am currently working on making some changes to the same track by adding other instruments, plus changing the ending and mid-section that I was never completely happy with.
I have several other tracks in the works but I’m not confident with my mastering yet, and don’t want to submit more until I’m a lot more sure I’m submitting something with a high chance of being accepted.
I understand. I had some rejections in the past due to solo piano track, aswell.So i have learned my lesson. Regarding mastering., try to tame the upper mids a tiny bit. Pianos tend to get bitey and quite distorted in that area. 900 till 5k cycles.Serial compression will solve the dynamics issue too.Fairchild and La2a with 1 or 2 dB threshold at low ratio and proper gain staging.I would not use any limiter on the master bus in a traditional way for piano acoustic tracks.Even 1 dB of limiter reduction may induce clipping .And not the nicest ones.Hope that helps.Good luck.
That’s very helpful Soundtrickz, thank you so much for the tips. Oddly, I actually intentionally ensured some of those higher notes stood out more as it seemed to fit the tune, but maybe I went a little too far with it. Since submitting that track I have learned more about mastering, EQ, etc., particularly for piano (as piano is something I can actually play to a limited extent). I’m working on a new version right now.
Thanks again, you’ve helped motivate me to keep going. All the best. 