Hello friends! Sorry for bad english. My two items was hard rejected. I want to discover reasons. Why? Unfortunately reviewers do not explain the reasons, very sad. Help me to understand. Is this tracks so so bad? Poor mixing, damn bad music idea or extremely low commercial value? Or combination of all those reasons. Here links to my damn “tracks”.
Thank you all!!!
It sounds pretty good to my amateur ears, flawless even. Hope someone else can explain the faults.
Help brothers and sisters! Need explanation and advices from you friends!
Hi SayDoo,
I think that while the material on both tracks sounded fine at first, thereafter, there wasn’t enough variety to keep the ear interested.
Before having a bash at writing stock music myself - by the way, I still haven’t had any tracks accepted - I went right back to basics.
Over 20 years ago I did a music degree and learnt virtually nothing of any value about writing music for the real world. The course mainly focused on a lot of way-out, avant-garde stuff that was so awful it would have your cat looking for another home. We had one lecture in three years on western tonal harmony.
Anyway, I know you didn’t ask for a bio, so I’ll get to the point.
About a year ago, I stumbled on a couple of books by a fella called Jonathan Peters, “Music Composition 1” and “Music Composition 2”.
Peters stresses throughout the two books that the most important principle of composition is “unity and variety” - you know, inversion, transposed inversion and that sort of thing - and he gives numerous examples to drive home the point.
Neither of your pieces, while sounding very professionally mixed to my amateur ears - had much in the way of variety, at least not up to the point where my ears wanted something different and I hit the pause button.
You’re obviously not some complete beginner, so I don’t want to cause offense by implying that you don’t know what you’re doing. Nevertheless, I do think that both tracks suffer from doing too much of the same for too long.
Disclaimer: I am not related to Jonathan Peters, nor do I have any connection with him whatsoever other than owning those books I referred to, which are priceless little gems.
Thank you for detailed feedback and advice!
Hi SayDoo. Nice work. I agree with what Michael wrote, and here’s some more feedback for you. This is just my opinion of course.
Acoustic River
It’s a great backing track, but it’s screaming out for a melody, and I think that’s one reason for rejection. I reckon this would make a great pop song with a nice gritty male vocal. I would also suggest doing some re-arranging on it. The part at 1:32 sounds more like a chorus than a middle 8 and I think it would be nice to hear that part more than once and earlier. Perhaps with some kind of variation. It’s my favourite part of the track, and it reminds me of something from the 70’s prog band Camel. Maybe off their awesome Snow Goose album! Great stuff!
The intro is a bit long and goes on one cycle too many I think. (AudioJungle music generally gets to the point pretty quickly).
I wasn’t blown away by the drums in this one. After the intro, I was expecting something a little more exciting, but the guitar remained the same and the drums just didn’t really take the track anywhere new.
Acoustic Mountain
I like this one more. It’s got a strong beat and more of a situated melody in those finger picked guitar notes, and because of that, I think it works better as a stand alone stock music track, although I can imagine some great vocals on this one too.
I think the transition into the part at 1:10 could use some work as it is a bit abrupt. Also in this part, I’m imagining an awesome electric guitar solo or something equally as powerful. It needs something, because it’s a little naked at the moment.
Finally, the ending sounds a bit rushed. It made me think “la la la la la… Oh… Bye then!”
Overall, I think the mixes could be improved. They’re sounding pretty good, but they’re a little bit boxy. Feels like they’ve been squeezed too much in the rhythm section. I think the drums could be loosened up a little bit and given more of a groove. They sound a bit hard quantised.
I think you have two potentially great songs here. Have you considered writing some lyrics and collaborating with a singer?
I’m seeing it too now.
@SayDoo - l think maybe the issue is structure. If it were a journey by car, the shift at around 1:00m - 1:30m in both your tracks seems like swerving into the wrong lane for an aborted junction take (best not check rear view mirrors to see the carnage left behind!).
I think those changes were organic in themselves. Their use in e.g. a craftworking instructional video on YouTube, would surely be fine? So what does Commercial music require you to have in mind, if not background for a YT instructional video?
Maybe focus must be on the song structure itself with the possible applications of the song being a background blur like in a professional photograph with bokeh.
In and of the songs themselves, l’m starting to agree with the other commenter now, the pace was random in context of entire track, i.e. too late & so it felt abrupt when it happened even though l think the changes themselves were organic within a a frame of reference of a few seconds either side of them.
Thank you all, friends! I appreciate your opinions, advices very much! Its a huge help for mee. Criscrakcer, no I have no experience in songwriting, and collobarate work. Just hobby and attempt to make some coins))