I need some advice about one very difficult to deal with tendency from an otherwise fairly pleasant client.
I’m working on scoring a video game and after submitting fully mixed tracks (mainly orchestral stuff, so lots of instruments), he has on several occasions asked me to lower the pitch and decrease the tempo by some random amount (ex. 1.5 times slower or 20% lower in pitch).
I don’t have to explain to everyone here that it’s not as simple as just altering the WAV file. In order to make the pitch change sound natural, I’d have to change the key of the track, which means moving every note for every instrument. It also means I’d have to redo all of my EQ in the mix. Apart from the fact that, in my latest piece that he requested this of, the basses are already playing at the bottom of their range, a subtle change like that has no real impact on the work. My client seems to think that by lowering the pitch it will make the track darker, or sadder. But he’s making these judgment after having only listened to the track once or twice (I know this because I’m sending him private SoundCloud links and can see the play count). I’m sure if he spent a little more time with the tracks as they are, he’d realize they fit just fine without these arbitrary alterations.
Since he has made this request multiple times, I’m getting a bit frustrated at how much he wants to micro-manage these details about the track. How do you suggest I approach him about this?
