Need input: what to improve?

This solo piano piece was hard rejected. What does it need? Strings? Less verb? Or else…

It needs a better sounding piano and more accurate playing.

@Audioland What !!! This comment is certainly not true and of no help. Maybe some other author can give better input.

Play the same piece on a good digital piano and it will get accepted. The problem is real grand pianos tend to sound dull, mine too, I own a Schimmel SP 182, and I stopped recording it because good digital pianos are easier to record and sound better today in modern music. You play very soft and use a lot of pedal so the sound gets a bit washed out.
Try to emphasize a bit more on the melody. Hope this helps this time :wink:

It’s a digital piano of good quality. Maybe your problem is with the reverb I think. Like I said, i can change the reverb, settings etc, but don’t think this will fix it. It probably has to do with adding some more or just the tune… don’t know, because for other lobraries it’s fine. Just not here.

I would play the right hand 1 octave higher and choose maybe a brighter piano sound.

maybe you can’t accept feedback? or you have a strong opinion about your track?

To me it is blown out like distorted, not gentle

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I can certainly accept feedback. About sound and like you say that it feels distorted… pieces of others have even more distortion. The piano i chose is one of the best i ever heard so there’s the problem I’m figuring out. Maybe It’s the master vst I put on it. I will try another setup.

Weird. I think it’s great. I have no idea what more accurate playing means. It’s obviously playing with the time, and there isn’t any dynamic fluctuations. There is at the end, it sounds like a “mistake”, but maybe you meant that.
I also think it’s a great sounding piano. Maybe not pristine clarity, but it sounds pretty decent to me.
I just read AJ was not looking for solo instrument pieces. Maybe this is why.
Keep at it! Maybe ad some other instruments.

@chrisjoyemusic That’s nice to hear. I thought I lost it. Another instrument is maybe better.

How is the track now with strings added?
@chrisjoyemusic @Audioland @Pandocrator https://soundcloud.com/aasmusicworks/sad-piano-version-with-strings

Hey,
Not bad. I would bet this will get rejected too. Are these keyboard-based strings? They sound like it. There needs to be more mod-wheel adjustments to get the dynamics flowing naturally. There are abrupt cut-offs between the chord strings where they drop from mf to mp or something to start the new chord.
Strings are typically the first choice to add to something like this, but you need to be careful, as poorly sampled strings can ruin a piece. In this style of piano, you would want a really nice string library to accompany it, and maybe something more like a chamber group or quartet. Rather than strings, maybe think outside the box - maybe some very ambient pad low in the mix, and add some other interesting accompaniments - maybe glock, maybe some perc to move it along, maybe acoustic guitar strums or ambient electric swells. Those would be my first thoughts. But I liked the string arrangement, just the quality didn’t stand up well. Keep at it! (and just my thoughts, so maybe someone else disagrees)

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I gave the strings another try. Switched them, layered and with more bowing. Must be better? See the above link(version with strings)