This one was by far the track i was most proud of, i was expecting it would have been accepted but it got hard rejected saying not at the quality standarts.
Soundcloud
What do you think about the track, any thoughts why it got rejected and what can i do to improve it?
Hello Ozan,
I just listened to your item now and I gotta say it is very well made songwriting wise. However there are a few things I would point out.
- The kickdrum used sounds a bit too muffled and thumpy. I would use either use a thinner/shorter one if I want to play it twice in a row or use another sample so it sounds natural while it fades away.
- The piano has too much reverb it sounds a bit muddy specially when it plays in lower octaves.
. The drum roll/hit at 1:13 sounds too abrupt and dry, it does not sit well in the mix.
. The strings are too much in the foreground in my opinion, I would also mess with the mod wheel to make them sound natural.
. I am not sure if I could hear any bass or any information filling the low end spectrum.
My advice is to use a better piano library and make sure the notes sound like a person would play them, not everything has to be on grid and of course the velocity could have some variations.
Use Voxengo SPAN, it’s a free tool you can add to your master channel to make sure your frequency spectrum is full.
Last but not least, listen to the bestsellers for referencing purposes, download their preview and run it through SPAN and analyze their item and try to reach that level of fullness. It’s okay to learn and make sure you’re on the right track.
Don’t get discouraged by the rejection, we all go through this, look for help and learn. 
All the best,
Michael.
Hello Michael,
Thank you for listening and giving feedback.
The beginning ambience is filling the low end spectrum in the song but i think it’s level is too low regarding the upcoming sounds, i will check on that.
I do use SPAN and it is my favourite spectrum analyzer.
Do you have any advices to write good percussion/drum for this genre, i really miss on that part and i would love some advice for that.
I will check on the other advices you gave and work on the song on the following week, thank you for helping.
With kind regards,
Ozan.
I honestly don’t have that much experience with chillout/downtempo as I do it for fun under another alias but professionally for a stock music website, I haven’t tried before.
I went now to Youtube and wrote ‘chillout drums tutorial’ and I found a lot of results, I am sure something will turn up and will be useful. Just keep your kick and snare/clap in mono because they should always be centered and present. That’s the only thing I could share here and yeah they usually don’t need any reverb (maybe the clap/snare but subtle)
What I can tell you and I found helpful in every genre is: don’t try to make 1 sound do all the work, like if you want a wide pad sound, don’t use 1 preset and add tons of effects on it but instead layer a few ones and focus on the strength of each one of them. A bit of processing here and there, EQ etc… and you will achieve a better sound.
Hope that was a bit useful though.
Cheers,
Michael.