Posts by garethcoker

randomnoise said
From my experience it’s all about your personal relationships with directors. They’re the ones who bring you along into jobs for agencies, production companies or directly for clients (in the realm of advertisement).

Just want to expand on this. Directors/producers, all very good, but if you’re a composer another good additional way to get in is…

make contact with EDITORS. They are the people who put together the temp music, the rough edits, etc…. If you make friends with editors, they might use your music as temp music, and then you get chosen for the gig, or at the very least, you will be in the conversation. Plus, as a composer, the person who will spend the most time with your music, is actually the editor. This works at films more than ad agencies, but I’ve gotten a lot of work through ad agencies too this way.

Or you could just become an editor & composer, like John Ottman (Usual Suspects, Superman Returns, new X-Men movie, etc..)

In summary, you can never have too many friends in key creative positions.

This is a popular track that is used often for celebrations, awards, etc… if you’re looking for something with a triumphant, orchestral feel, check this out.

The middle section in particular has the rising feel that you want, and it definitely ends with a boom. There are 3 different edits of the track as well.

LumenMedia said
This track is for SOUNDTRACK – it WILL be background, it does not need to lead anywhere. It has mood.

But you have a melody instrument that REALLY sticks out in the mix and that makes it NOT a background track.

If you try to blend this track with dialog/sound effects (that’s what a soundtrack is supposed to do) – it will fail, because the harp is too loud.

A mixer trying to blend this track with dialog/sound will just turn down the music because the harp is too loud. As I said before, you have two options, and neither of them are that complicated. This track would almost certainly be approved if you adjusted the harp.

I would suggest you look up the definition of melody, because to be blunt, what you wrote in yours – is not a melody. It is a series of notes with nothing that defines it as a melody.

As for this:

LumenMedia said
With all respect to you – it is not territory of reviewer to command authors what to do in terms of melody.

Yes it is. If the melody is no good, that means it is not suitable for a commercial purpose.

The reviewer’s job is is to decide what is accepted for general commercial potential.

You clearly have tried to make a melody in this track that has no defining quality as a melody – thus it isn’t really suitable. You either lower the harp in the mix to make it a background track, or you study what makes a melody a melody – and rewrite the harp part.

You are entitled to disagree with me, but simply – on this one – you are not going to find many people that agree with you. Sorry.

I understand what the reviewer is saying. He is mainly referring to the first 110 seconds of your piece. You have the melody in a harp instrument.

Problem is, the melody just goes on and on and on, and while the notes are different, none of the phrases actually ‘say’ anything. It’s not really interesting to listen to, and there isn’t really any strong or memorable melody or theme for the listener to grab on to, it’s just a bunch of notes on Aeolian mode. For the track to be commercially viable (what Envato is looking for) you need to make something more thematic, more defined, OR have that harp line mix into the background so the track can serve its commercial purpose as a background track. Right now, the track doesn’t work in either way.

The harp is quite strong in the mix, so it stands out. Unfortunately, because it stands out, it highlights that the melody-line isn’t that interesting to listen to.

You have two options:

1) Put the harp lower (much lower) in the mix so it’s not so prominent, it would then work better as a background track and explain this to the reviewer.

2) If you want to keep the harp high up in the mix, then you’ll have to change the notes, put together more individual phrases, rather than something that is totally ambiguous and vague.

Also, the texture/arrangement of the track doesn’t change at all. It’s the same instruments/arrangement the whole way through. You could easily make the track more interesting by changing the arrangement from time to time.

One thing worth considering. It’s pretty clear that the quality standards have been raised recently. This makes it easier for reviewers to reject tracks – freeing up more time to get good tracks approved.

jhunger said
I still have a core set of songs that seem to sell consistently, but even now I’ll get sales from relatively slow selling tunes that have been there for 3+ years, the old socks, as it were.

This.

Interestingly, I’ve sold 13 tracks in a row (and 17 out of the last 18) that are all different from each other.

But yes, fundamentally, the longer you are here, you’ll notice that the variety of sales starts to increase a lot.

Front page times are so short now it’s all irrelevant. Honestly, it’s probably the frontpage itself that might need an overhaul, but there’s not an obvious better solution.

I would reserve judgement until post-E3, though I do understand the gaming community’s general concern.

Why they had to break everything up into two events is another question entirely, but that’s what they did.

Any Envato people going to E3? Shall we have an E3 Envato meet-up?

daveydad said
Just had one rejected for: This submission does not meet our sample quality standard. Any thoughts on what this means? Composition or recording quality?

Recording quality. ‘Sample quality standard’ would suggest to me that your piece was orchestral and that the instruments used and your virtual mock-up was not to a high enough standard.

Can you place a link to the piece that was rejected so we can give better feedback?

Yeah, I can see why it got rejected.There is nothing wrong with the music at all, it sounds great, nice arrangement, good mix, etc….

Problem is, structurally, and harmonically it is very similar to the Part One. To the average buyer, there is not really a huge difference between the tracks. To a musician, obviously there are differences.

For me, your 2nd version is definitely classed as an ‘alternate’ version of your first track, and so your 2nd version should be uploaded together with the first one.

Here is an example of something similar from my portfolio. http://audiojungle.net/item/this-new-life/1244444 The 2nd version of this track has a totally different guitar riff, the arrangement is slightly heavier, and the drum beat is different, and the ending is also completely different – but I still think it’s a variation, rather than a new track. That’s probably what the reviewer thought when hearing your track.