Hi all,
I like to share one of my composition for Vijay Music awards Promo in South India.
I would like to get your valuable feedbacks and suggestions.
There is a video version from Youtube and a link from soundcloud for those you don’t like to watch the visuals.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYYHPe5Q2sQ&list=PLEE8FF7EF2C92A87E&index=25
https://soundcloud.com/anilnc/vijay-music-awards-promo
Thanks in advance.
Regards
Anil nc
Well, everything I typed got erased because I forgot to right click on the Youtube link to open it in a new tab so I’ll just re-type it briefly and not necessarily in the best order.
Overall it sounds good, but you’re not asking for praise so I’ll list what I think could be improved.
When she hits the drums in the first half of the video I’d have really have liked to audibly be able to hear it with at least a similar drum, most listeners wouldn’t be able to identify the visual drum with the sound.
The production is good throughout, so not much to add there. However the orchestra section at 0:50 and beyond is severely lacking. The melodies are nice and work well with the visuals. However, if there is a string section there it might as well not be because it’s so quiet and the string section is the section the ear never gets tired of hearing. When she’s in the air/cloud thing you really could have had the string sections joining the main melody notes but sustain/legato and had the horns doing a question/answer part because the crescendo is quite loud and it sounds quite odd because of the lack of being able to hear the orchestra.
The powerful drum hits do have impact, but they stand out too much because of the lack of intensity/dynamics from the orchestra. It’s hard to tell whether it’s even orchestrated properly because you just can’t hear it enough and since it’s the end of the track it really should be more climatic where the full orchestra would be playing at f or ff.
There may be a few other things but I am tired and can’t really think.
Love the visual version, but the drums could use some taming and the strings need to be remixed to take more prevalent role in 2nd half. Love the instrumentation and I unlike Jonathon really dug the girl hitting drum thing. Not sure if was me but the mastering seemed a little bright and not many differences in loudness levels also. This is a really good piece and you should get it perfect. Great to hear your composition
Hi Jonathan and Kzarider,
Thank you very much for listening and adding your valuable and precious suggestions.
But I must have added few things about this project I guess. The music was composed prior to the visuals. The clients just explained verbally through a telephone conversation about the concept of the visuals. There should be mixture of more than 2 genres of Indian music.
I actually didn’t like the visuals, particularly the editing of that drum hit by the girl.
Jonathan has caught it right, even I suggested my clients to re-edit that when they showed me the rough visuals.
And one more thing, it was a rough mix, I did for them to go for shoot and edit and give me the final video, so that I could add some more thing and re-check with visuals. But due to the emergency situations, they suddenly broadcasted in a night and after that informed me. 
So it was not planned to use drum in the visuals, I just created different music. Could have added similar drum (Taiko) on that visual.
And one more thing, the girl hitting one drum and turning looking hitting another was not matching with music in my opinion.
About strings, I really wanted to mix that part properly, but not string section. I didn’t want string section here, it would sound more same. I thought to bring those choir a bit more like showing the award as a star or angel.
Jonathan, I’m sorry you had to type twice 
Thanks again friends.
And one more thing… The youtube version seem to be in Mono, hence you can listen the soundcloud. 
Well, in my opinion the end should be a bit more climactic and you won’t get there without making full use of the orchestra sections since that is the sound at the end, you already have a french horn crescendo. I don’t think you’ll reach the dynamic levels required for an ending with impact without doing so.
You can always mix the choir louder than the strings, but they really should be there for support even if they’re not a main focus. It’s not like it’s a section where you wish to tone things down by dropping instruments. It’s the big climatic end to the promo. Missing out instruments just for the sake of not being the same as others is never a good reason to 
Especially if you’re gonna work in this kinda stuff and especially in film you’ll find you get less and less freedom to do what you want to which is exactly why I stopped
The combination of styles sounded good and it was the SoundCloud version I listened to first and halfway through commenting I thought I should see the visuals too, hence it erasing what I typed.
To stress again, the end part doesn’t have the right climax and dynamics and is too bare. The melody is fine, that’s good, but I’d urge you to orchestrate in a more standard manner. The piece is creative anyway so you don’t need to be missing out crucial instruments and it’ll cause more harm than it will do good. But I guess that’s up to your clients to decide if they are happy, same for the visuals, they’re the ones paying 
Well done anyway, I like a variety of ethnic/world music myself and I did enjoy this as a whole, but really missing that big full orchestra climax, since that’s really the style for the end section, it just sounds half empty.
Thanks Jonathan for your kind words. I’ll keep them in my mind.
And you are right, clients decide what they want as final as even I want them to pay me happily and not unsatisfied.
You mean to say more head room? When I used to leave some headroom so the end part or the louder part of music gets more punch, it sounds a bit weak in a TV when other commercial ads come along. So what am I missing?
Thanks a lot kzarider.