Too MIDI?

[mazz]

In comparing your piece with the one that was forwarded, I would have to say that the return was merited on the basis of the sound quality of the recording and the quality of the composition. The forwarded piece had much more life and air in the recording and sounded much more modern and well recorded, to my ears.

"Too MIDI" is an unfortunate choice of words and shouldn't be allowed, it's too much of a catchall and IMO a lazy way out. But it is possible what they mean is "it sounds like samples". Given the quality of samples these days, and if samples are used by an experienced mock up artist, it is highly possible to mistake live instruments for samples and vice versa, and if the recording or performance of the live instruments is not as good as the recording of a sample library (and some sample developers spends tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on their recordings), then it might be possible for a listener who is not a recording engineer to think a substandard recording of live instruments was a sampled production.

In some ways using live instruments is a higher bar than samples because, as mentioned above, you have to have a really good recording situation for live instruments (room, mice, engineer) and then you have to be able to have the final product presented in a competitive package. Unfortunately your presentation isn't up to that quality.

I'm sure this can be construed as harsh, but please understand that this is a competitive game and given the quality of the forwarded track I heard, that is your competition. Take a good listen to yours and the forwarded one and make note of the differences.

I'm not apologizing for the screeners "too MIDI" comment. MIDI, as Andy said, doesn't have a sound in and of itself, but MIDI gets a bad rap because it can be used to create very stiff and lifeless sounding productions in the hands of an inexperienced user. "Too MIDI" shouldn't be allowed to be used, the screener should dig just a little deeper, even on a yes/no brief summary, but I stand by my opinion of your piece.

Maybe having one of the experienced engineers here master your recording with hight quality ambience and some good stereo enhancement could raise the level of your production and it could get through next time.

Peace,

Mazz