Last Summer's Top 3

It's sometimes useful to look backwards to inform future direction, so I looked up which songs I recorded last summer sold the best over one year. These are the three most successful selling songs that I did last year.

3. Oriental Journey


Kind of a surprise - It's not the most authentic piece you'll ever hear. I guess it's what the average American musician thinks traditional oriental music sounds like. It will work just fine in your ninja movie trailer.

2. Island Bounce


I always loved the song "White Sky" by Vampire weekend, and that sort of bouncy and busy vibe that similar songs have. Another example is "Proof" from Paul Simon's "Rhythm of the Saints" album. The sweet sound of music from Camaroon, Carribbean islands, or many latin countries. It inspired me to do one of my own, and this was it.


1. Accordion Duet


Lovingly referred to by my kids as the "drunken frenchmen song." I get why they associate accordions with France, but I'm not sure about the drunken part. Who cares? It was the best selling song of last summer.

So what is the lesson for future recordings? I guess find some interesting style of world music, and zone in on making an instrumental only composition in that style as authentic as possible.

Sounds like a fun plan.

Short Theme

This is the number 2 submission of the summer. I actually have bigger projects in the works, but knock off some of these short ones to give myself a break. I seem to do better when I have 3 or 4 songs to work on at the same time. It's better if I can switch to something else for a while and come back to it later with "fresh" ears.

Sarasponda

Sarasponda is my first official submission of the summer. It's a dutch spinning song, but my version has a definite appalacian folk feel. What can I say - I've never been to Holland.

I picked this one because It's one of the songs I like to play on the mandolin I got for my birthday. After 3 months of practice, I'm certainly proficient enough to produce a commercially viable recording on the instrument, right? We'll see.

First Recording of the Summer

The first offering of the summer is a quick little EDM song I cranked out more to familiarize myself with new equipment than to produce anything usable from a commercial standpoint. Still kind of catchy.

Summer Goal checked off

Good news...I now officially have 176 items up for sale on Audio Jungle. The goal for the summer was getting to 175, and I started somewhere around the neighborhood of 148.

Looking back over this summer compared to last, the reviewers seemed much tougher this time around. Last summer I got 24 accepted, but I only had to submit 29 songs to do it. About an 83% acceptance rate. This summer I have in 26/40 so far, which is only 65%. I honestly don't think it's because last summer's music was better than my newest offerings - I think it's because they are being more choosy about what they accept.

One reason why I believe that is because I had only been working with Logic Pro (the recording software I use) for 6 months at the beginning of last summer. I was still learning how to use it. I'm much more confident with it now. I certainly don't think I am a worse musician than last year. I just think the competition is more fierce and the standards are higher all around. I'm gonna have to keep the axe sharp if I'm going to keep up.

Week 9 Scorecard

My submissions have made it through the queue this week, and I got 4/5 accepted. Pizzi Intro, Simple Winds Loops 1, 2, & 3 all made it in, the Blue Jazz Loop didn't. The summer total is now 26/40. A much better showing than last week.

Upbeat Piano Intro

This 20 second lead-in features piano, bass, percussion and light synth to create an up-beat, grandiose introduction. It's my 1st submission of week 10. I should have results from last weeks submissions soon.