Hello ! I’m new here and my first uploaded track was rejected. (does not meet the general commercial quality standard required…).
It means that my mix is bad ? I really want to know what you think. My feeling is that the arrangement it’s not great…it’s more like a song made for a band. Here’s the track :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVAibczEZmo&feature=youtu.be
Thank you !
Hi and welcome!
I think your track has cool interesting sections. But it might be a bit to “band/artistic” as you are mentioning. Like the section at 00:08 gives me a different mood then section 00:40. Absolutely nothing wrong with that, but I think AJ tracks need to have a more consistent mood throughout, and a clear idea in the description of what kind of videos you are imagining it would suit.
Mix wise I think the track is good, only thing I noticed is that the drums sticks out a little, especially toms, so you might want to reverb them a little or adjust them them in volume a tad.
I think it’s cool! To me the drums are the weakest part of the mix, but they aren’t bad by any stretch. I’m surprised it wasn’t accepted really… it’s hard to tell here sometimes!
Add me to the list, I think it’s a cool track, too. Your playing is great, as well as the tones and the general mix. I also think the drums are the weakest element, but like the others said, I don’t think they sound bad, either. To me, it sounds like you’re using virtual drums (as do I); if so, they don’t sound as good of “quality” as your other instruments. When I’m mixing my virtual drums, I take a lot of time to make them sound more natural by playing around with the velocities and sometimes nudging the timing just a tiny bit here and there so they sound less artificial. Also, using a very high quality drum sample library helps. It’s a pain in the bum sometimes, but it helps. All that said, I can’t see AJ rejecting this song because of the drums…
My only guess (and a best guess is all we can give around here) is that as far as the composition goes, it’s a bit repetitive. When you have a song form like an ABABA, for example, every time you come back to the A section, I’d add a little something different so it’s not just an exact repeat as before. You could keep the first A section pretty basic, and then the next time you come back to it, change the melody, or add to it. And maybe the second time you could add or change a harmonic element… Just change it up a bit, but don’t go too crazy. Beyond that, I don’t think it was too “band-ish” or “artistic.”
I just had a piece accepted a week or two ago that I thought wouldn’t have a chance… I thought it would be a bit “too much” for AJ, but they approved it. So who knows???
I’d say tweak it a bit here and there depending on what you feel it needs (take or leave anyone else’s suggestions), and resubmit it (I got another piece approved doing that as well). Good luck!
great advice right here.
Thank you very much for your replies ! You helped me a lot. Was hard for me to adapt to the requirements here because I’m used to play/write music that is a bit more complex. I always had problems when I had to create simple songs. But after reading your replies and listening to some top tracks I finally figured out how to work from now on and what mistakes I made.
About the drums…I just got Superior Drummer 3 and I think I’m covered from now on :).
Thanks again for your help !
Adrian