Jazz tune made with VSL

[Maarten Leon]

I am happy to work with the VSL SE 1 now for a year, I am still suprised how many instruments there are in this library. I have written a jazz tune now with this library combined with some own recorded cajón and hand clapping. The VSL instruments are:

Piano, Double bass solo pizzicato, Flute legato, Bb Clarinet sustain, and Alt violins group sustain

The link is:

Thanks for listening,

Maarten

[crusoe]

Hi Maarten,

This is a beatiful piece, I liked how you used the strings to create the background for the melody, really beatiful. And the melody is catchy and likeable, you centered your piece around it, I only wish you'd develop it further. I wonder why you called this tune a jazz piece, I thought it's a pre-jazz tonal piece with maybe a few touches of jazz harmony.

The clarinet is very nice, too. Maybe with a few additional articulations you could make it even better.

A few technical criticisms:

- The claps and cajon are very dry; I believe adding some reverb could give them a better place in the mix.

- The bass is too quiet or at least saturated by the piano; you need to give it some more space in the mix.

- The instruments don't follow each other well rhythmically. Claps are out of sync with the piano, I think, but I couldn't figure this out 100%, maybe it was something else that confused me.

Cheers,

Crusoe.

[Maarten Leon]

Hey Crusoe,

Thanks for listening to the track and the compliment.
Strings can be difficult to arrange in the mix, but this time I kept the volumes low, maybe that is the reason they sound ok in the mix.
Maybe it is indeed a pre-jazz tune.
The cajon is indeed dry, I used no reverb at all, maybe in a next version I will change that
Thanks for the advice concerning the bass and piano, I suppose I have to look at the frequencies of the piano again.
Then the rhythm, the cajon is just a simple copy paste beat (a sort of clicktrack), so then all the other instruments are sometimes a little bit before the beat. Normally I would also play the percussion live and make the total sound more natural, but this time I didn't.