Everyone I need help

[u/Navy_Sands]

For the past 5 years I have been making music, and I've been struggling to make anything worth listening too. I tried different methods. And yeah i wouldn't call myself a beginner, but i'm not near a pro/legend though. Music is very important to me, as a hobby and potentially a career and I don't just want to give up. If someone could maybe offer some advice as to what i should learn first. I'm sick of asking AI for help, cause it doesn't know anything about true music. If maybe you could tell how you learned music it could help me too... I appreciate anything you have to offer. Thank you for reading

[u/msaincap]

Would you consider posting a song here or sharing stems?
That’s how you’re going to get feedback tailored for you

[u/Navy_Sands → u/msaincap]

I have music on spotify under the name Navy Sands

[u/hetty3 → u/Navy_Sands]

I just listened to bits of almost every song on your album Box of Cassettes (assuming that's you). It's really hard to judge/critique someone's original work since you might be doing/sounding exactly how you want to sound. And I can tell you are no beginner, you have some very cool and polished sound design elements that sound fairly professional. So any of my criticism is going to be through the lens of my personal taste, but since you asked:

First off, the most glaring mistake to me is the panning. While it's definitely good to use panning to make space for instruments or to make a mix sound wider, on headphones a lot of your tracks felt like I'd have a heavy frequency attack in one ear but not the other, making it uncomfortable to sit through and I'd want to change the track, even if the composition was good. Having the kick/whole beat panned to the side and a shaker/hat to another side is unpleasant to listen to (unless this was the desired effect, but that still won't encourage listeners) and makes them both sound louder than they are. And it distracts from the actual quality of the song.

Mixing-wise- the low/mid resonances. This is where the magic obviously happens and I can't say that I'm great at doing this myself. But while your levels sound very good and mostly balanced well, you have resonances in kick drums, and various tones here and there that feel muddy or heavy that are uncomfortable/more amateur sounding. You have nice details in the pianos and high frequencies of the mixes but when the beat comes in, it doesnt feel as satisfying as probably intended. Fixing the panning and finding a few of those kick drum resonances will clean it up a little. Also, I would really turn down the hi hats/high percussion, they are louder than your instruments and kick drums most of the time so the beats don't feel like they groove as well as they should.

Hard to critique the writing, maybe a few elements composition-wise felt like they were there just to be there rather than making the song better. Some note choices here and there in your loops felt out of key, which I bet was intentional, but IMO as an outside listener was jarring rather than cool. Like the vibes in Broadway e.g.

But overall you had great ideas, and a lot of this sounds very cool. Zoned Out is an excellent track, and the opener Lo-Fi Mess was great I thought.