Just got hard rejected, any thoughts on this piece as to why? :)

Curious what anyones thoughts are on as to why this got rejected? Something i’m missing perhaps?
All comments appreciated. :slightly_smiling:

Is this 100% dry strings (also the glock and (what seems like) harp harmonic melody)? That’d be a good reason. Add some room to your music, let it breave air!
Another one: Seems like you don’t have enough Round Robins for your repetitive structure with staccato motifs.
Also the melody is so slowly played, it’s hard to follow it’s development which lets it seem more random than motivated, even tho in the beginning it follows some motifs.
And one more: Is this 9 min track supposed to be ONE piece? Or is this a combination of different versions? In the first case you may re-think formal development, there are many abrupt endings throughout the piece.

Thanks for the feedback. Not a 9 minute piece, it’s a combination of different versions (fyi -with the prospective buyer in mind). See description for track details.

When you say the glock/harp melody, what are you suggesting thats wrong with it?

Good point on the round robins, I actually felt that going into it. Duly noted.

Thanks so much for taking the time to critique this piece. Much appreciated. :slightly_smiling:

Right, think I understood your first point. It’s definitely not 100% dry, ambience was added to some of the tuned percussion parts to give it some more spacial dimension(via plate verb). Thinking it needs to be more wet(ie- more verb = space)?

Well, verb!=space.
You gotta setup some room ERs, depending on how dry the samples were recorded. The strings sound like sitting in a small room already, I kinda feel like there already is an ER that is suitable for strings. But I can imagine the melody to get some 100ms ERs and putting it back in space (ie. lowering the original instruments volume in relation to the ER volume + filtering high freqs to simulate a bit air absorption).
When finished shaping the ERs with EQ, you can add a tail. Since you don’t use woods or brass, you could just group all tracks and send them to one single tail. Maybe shape the tail input with EQ to filter the below 500Hz range, otherwise your celli motifs may produce muddy sounds.

I should point out, I’m no expert at mixing and my mixes still need a lot of improvement.
But I hope you can find some usable information.

Again, thanks for taking the time in your response. Verb = space! Lol, wasn’t trying to be patronising, just wanted to make sure we were on the same page. :slightly_smiling:

All your info is great. Some things for me to think about. Thanks.

The dry strings threw me off at first but as I keep listening I really like this track. Builds nicely and very catchy. It has to be the lack of reverb on the instruments and the track does drag a little bit, I’d shorten the first version, love the percussion that comes in at 1:36 but it takes too long to get to it.

Yeh, totally agree now. In hindsight, more reverb would have been better. Also, it does drag a bit too long; agreed. Actually working on an alternative version right now, once im done i’ll post it and would love to get your thoughts on that version as well (ie - whether its better or worse, lol.) Thanks for taking the time friend. :slightly_smiling:

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So a couple of things that I might take a look at are the syncopation of your track, the melody line, and the octave ranges of your instrumentation. You have your opening string line on the quarter note and it stays there until you bring in the melody line on the whole note. Now as you build your track up it might be nice to ad in one of your string lines hitting a consistent eighth note staccato rhythm or even sixteenth notes. As far as your octave range, try spreading it out a bit more. It sounds like you have most of the strings in the same frequency range which causes it to become muddy. If you bring one or two of them up an octave or so it will create more space. Finally I think if you simplify your melody line it will really help. Because its so slow you should keep it as simple as possible maybe 3 to 4 notes. This will help it not sound quite as random. I hope this is helpful and let me know if you have any questions!

Great! Thanks a lot for the feedback. Totally agree, I’ve made quite a few adjustments in relation to the mix and also the arrangement, just under the gun with a few other projects so hopefully I’ll have an alternate version up by the weekend. Would be great to have your opinion on the newer version. Thanks again for taking the time. :slightly_smiling:

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