Please, would you feedback my rejected track :-)

Hello my friends, as I always like to do after rejections I like to post my track so I can learn something from you and then get to know that thing what was missing to my track so it didn’t get approved.
My ideas it is maybe

1-too complicated Arrangment
2.-Maybe the basslines?

Thanks in advance!

1 Like

Hey!

  1. This track make feel dissonance (beat and bass sounds like intense electronic music but other instruments like acoustic epic music)

  2. You are right - complicated arrangement (frequent change of instruments and melodies)

  3. I don’t like strings in this track, it so loud and have some another mood than all track.

2 Likes

Not bad at all, but it doesn’t groove.

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Sorry you got rejected. Keep at it! This track is nice, but it’s a little “thudy” on the bass, and the only highs you seem to have on the high hat. Also seems like a lot of mids. Strings are a little muddy and dated. The panning cymbal is also a little distracting and repetitive and definitely loopy. Anyways, good luck!

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i think your production, is missing a good masterize , separate the sounds, in sides, control de volumes, for very instrument, they can’t sound all the same level.

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Thank you very much everyone for all the answers, I appreciate your comments and contributions. More or less now and thanks to you I have a better idea of the reasons why the song was rejected.

I really like this track, I’m used to listening to the kind of music where things have moments of dissonance. When done properly this can provoke feelings no other arrangements can. But for AJ where first impression is all that counts this could be a problem.

The most general opinion I can give here is something I have a rich history of :slight_smile: I think in cases like this, when music is dreamy and opens doors to imagination it’s all too easy to fall into a trap of hearing stuff that is only in our imagination. But when someone hears it for the first time and is not warmed up for it, they can easily miss the magic or hear too many errors. I can’t tell if this is the case here but as I said, it’s happend to me all the time, maybe I’m not the only one. In other words - I am listening with my imagination not with my ears. And when my imagination goes wild, it adds richness and magic to the music and there is no way I could hear little mistakes or missing elements etc. So I can’t improve it.

What I mean here is that this track has very nice musical qualities (I think melodies, mood, arrangement, genre etc are fine). I’m sure it was rejected for more “technical” reasons (mixing/mastering, poor instrument samples in some cases). I am convinced that this could become a very nice Ambient/Deep House AJ track without a single change to the MIDI. All the changes need to be done tweaking the sound sources and the mix.

Technically speaking, there are a few things that could get fixed easily and would significantlly improve the track.

  1. Treat your cymbals as other melodic instruments. Cymbals have a tone. At 6th second there comes a reversed gong-like sound that is not in harmony with the bassline and everything else. I’m sure this is the moment when reviewer gets 99% sure he’s going to reject the track. He just waits for the next smallest mistake to appear and he’s done. It’s funny that after listening to it 5 times it doesn’t bother me any more. But when listening for the first time it was a deal breaker for me. You don’t want to confuse your buyers (and reviewers) with uncleaned/untuned samples.

  2. At second 34 come some instances of extra loud kick - which seems like a mistake. I’m sure this is the moment when reviewer finally decides and stops listening.

  3. As others said the strings get too loud. They sound a bit out dated (which maybe isn’t a bad thing for this genre) and in this case I would try to make them less noticable. Leave them in the background for the mood and make some room for voice over.

  4. Try transposing everything at least 1 whole tone up. This technique sometimes helps to hear everything with “fresh ears” and spot the unwanted stuff.

  5. Go to your master bus and remove everything below 1000 hz. You should still hear the bass and everything else. If you don’t - that means your low-end is not connected well with your high-end and the listeners will have difficulties understanding your music on small speakers (eg smartphones).

  6. Remove all the plugins from your master bus and start your mix from scratch. Try to make the melodies a little softer and quieter (a few db down or maybe take some high requencies out in some cases). And make the low-end maybe a bit more prominent. Don’t fall into the loudness trap. Do not overcompress/limit your master just because “louder music sells better.” Overcompression kills all your chances.

  7. For each channel also ask yourself “Is this instrument something that AurusAudio would use in his track?” :smiley: I am not saying you should copy other author’s sounds but this particular question surely helps you identify sounds that are too weak to stay in the composition. You migh convince yourself that the bass or the strings are something you like - but when you discover that your favourite AJ authors never use this stuff, you might find out that it’s time for you too to maybe move on and change your direction here and there.

I still struggle with nr. 7 :smiley: Hope it helps, I look forward to hearing the renewed version of your track!

2 Likes

Wow this has been like a gift fallen from the sky giving so many details as to how to help me with the song. How good!.

Thank you very much and I will read carefully the points you tell me. I especially liked the way you explain the differences between what you have in your dream head and what sounds in reality.
I think I’m going to redo everything again from MIDI but I will let this track rest for a few months to enjoy it more.

Thank you very much PhotonicMusic!! :slight_smile:

1 Like

Not bad, I liked it. I believe the time options were missing.