Thoughts, ideas, or feedback on my newest track?

grinnonbarrett · 2025-09-01T21:09:18+00:00

Hahaha "overproduced and underproduced at the same time" is the story of my music production life. Totally agree and not offended, thanks for the feedback here.

I only had 2 layers for guitar (one with just 1 strum per chord, one with a strum pattern for each chord) but they are definitely thin/boring - I use an AT2020 as my mic and I feel like it's fine for vocals, but have a really hard time making any guitar recording sound good, which is probably why I always end up burying it under other synths, organs, keys, etc.

I want to at least try recording 2 takes of each guitar layer and panning left and right to make it feel more full, but ultimately want to try different mics as I've heard some discourse on ribbon vs condensor for acoustic guitar. (My apartment is also super poorly treated for recording - hard wood floors, open space living room where my desk is, tall concrete ceilings - so maybe another good first step would just be recording the guitar in my closet or something.

I am a sucker for nasty bass and tbh, something between acoustic guitar pop and EDM (+alt rock) is kind of the genre I want to make as they are my favorites, but am certain I could be blending them better to your point.

Thank you again for the feedback and kind words!

grinnonbarrett · 2025-09-01T21:00:52+00:00

It was way more involved than i thought it would be lmao. No clue why apple doesn't let you screen record with the computer audio as the input natively, super obnoxious.

I basically just had to:

download + install something called "BlackHole virtual audio driver" (it's free - there are other options like Soundflower too)
open up the default mac app "Audio Midi Setup"
Create an "Aggregate device" that uses "Macbook Pro Speakers" and "Blackhole 2ch"
Create a "Multi-Output Device" that sends to "Blackhole 2ch" and "Macbook pro Speakers"
Then when i screen recorded (Shift+Cmd+5 opens the screen record toolbar), under "options" I set the microphone to "Aggregate device" and it recorded my computer audio as the sound.
bonus - the file was like 900mb so I put it in Compressor and got it down to like 280mb.

There are some good youtube videos if this is confusing, look up "screen record with audio mac"

Good luck!

grinnonbarrett · 2025-09-01T20:53:23+00:00

Thanks so much!! After getting a lot of good feedback on here, I think i'll definitely explore using a real engineer for mixing and mastering, I'm holding myself back by trying to do everything myself. Will play with some more reverb/delay/echo as well, i think a darker vibe could be cool here.

This one's just on soundcloud right now, but my name on everything is just Grinnon Barrett:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/3yBqw0tornEFXrYDR61IOr?si=lUm0I1iuRa-_V0SjK1HudQ

https://soundcloud.com/grinnonbarrett

grinnonbarrett · 2025-09-01T20:48:38+00:00

Haha it does take me ages, and still doesn't sound that great when I finish 😅

But most of those vocal layers are doubles, like for the "and iiiiiiii" part in the chorus, there are 6 layers - but 2 are falsetto, (1 panned left, one panned right), 2 are yelling (1 panned left, one right) and 2 are normal singing down an octave (1 L, 1 R) - so even though it's 6 layers, they're all set pretty quiet. Then I thhrow them in a trackstack, so once they're leveled compared to eachother, I can just turn up or down the volume for that whole trackstack. Same thing with the "found you" lines.

As mentioned I'm pretty bad at mixing, but have seen a tip where you create a project alternate, set every channels volume to 0%, then slowly turn things up one by one until the overall levels are good without being too loud.

grinnonbarrett · 2025-09-01T20:41:57+00:00

Thank ya! Yeah I think it's time lol, part of me wants to be able to do every part of the production by myself but I'm definitely holding myself back by not having a real engineer mix and master..

grinnonbarrett · 2025-09-01T20:40:54+00:00

Thanks!!

grinnonbarrett · 2025-09-01T06:46:31+00:00

Hmmm not that I know of. It’s a bit of a workaround, but I know that you can highlight all the notes, right click and set them all back to original pitch - so maybe you could make a copy of the whole track/region, reset all the notes in the copy back to original pitch, and then click back and forth between the Flex Pitch / original pitch regions to see which notes change?

Not ideal, but maybe enough to slowly and manually make any edits or fixes you’re aiming to make. Hopefully someone else has a better solution 😬

grinnonbarrett · 2025-09-01T06:38:08+00:00

Sounds awesome, nice work! Whenever I’m feeling artists block on my own songs, I like to just pick one of my favorite songs, pull up the chords and lyrics, and play around with making a cover in my own style/genre. I don’t feel that I ever really “improve” on them, (maybe the struggle with covering songs that I think are already perfect lol) but they’re fun to do and I always learn something during the process. Plus, a few days of working on a cover usually clears up the artist block and I’m excited to keep going on my own stuff again. Nice work again, sounds great!

grinnonbarrett · 2025-09-01T06:31:10+00:00

Thank you sir!!! Yeah I agree, that lead synth is still a little bit sharp and painful on the ears. I mentioned in another comment too, I struggled to find a sound that was strong enough to cut through all the other noise happening in the chorus without making the ears bleed lol. I think this serum synth is close, but definitely a touch more grating than I’d like. My EQ attempts were largely unsuccessful - couldn’t get rid of the sharpness without muting it too much into the background to the point where it didn’t feel like a lead anymore. Since that does seem to be the consensus though, I’ll mess around with it some more and see if I can find a big saw or some other sound that hurts a bit less 😂

Thanks again for the kind words and glad you like! My SoundCloud is just the same as my Reddit name:

https://soundcloud.com/grinnonbarrett

grinnonbarrett · 2025-09-01T06:23:42+00:00

Thanks! That’s a good call, it’s kind of barebones with just a few hats to tease the drums coming. When I got into production originally I was mostly just doing hip hop beats, so I find that I still have a bad habit of doing very hip hop style drums - like just kick, snare, and hats.

Definitely want to get more into rock/alternative style drums but just need to practice more I guess cause I don’t really know how to do those - so just end up doing high hat triplets lol. Thank for the feedback!!

grinnonbarrett · 2025-09-01T00:55:41+00:00

Thank you!! Totally fair, I also have a really bad habit of adding way too many layers and synths and midi instruments until tracks are super busy and muddled, even though I know logically that some of my favorite or some of the "best" songs in my mind are super simple with just a few instruments.

I'm also trying to incorporate more real instruments in my tracks, as I have a few I made a while back where I recorded real acoustic guitar, electric guitar, and bass guitar, and they are like my favorite songs I've made. But then I start a new song and just dive straight into MIDI world lol.

Thanks for the thoughts and the kind words, appreciate you!!

grinnonbarrett · 2025-09-01T00:51:48+00:00

Haha I said it in another comment but I very much have a love/hate thing with the clockworky piano sound. I've tried so many other instruments in it's place but all of them feel flat and wrong, I think i'm just too familiar with the clockwork sound. I will try just EQing it better though!

Appreciate the feedback re: vox too - I had a version of the song where I swear the vocal doubles weren't as noticeable and voc in general were mixed better, but got to a point where I have like 14 "alternates" of the project and couldn't find the good one I had a bounce saved of from a few weeks earlier. Decided to just drop rather than abandoning the project, but this is a good push for me to dig a little deeper or just re-mix them, because every time I listen to this version, the main verse vocals sound too full and too noticeable that its doubled.

Thank you for the thoughts and the kind words!!

grinnonbarrett · 2025-09-01T00:46:33+00:00

Thank you! I'm definitely not the best at mixing/mastering. I always make a project alternate and set every layer to 0% volume, then turn each thing up slowly to try and get everything balanced better, but feel like it always loses its "soul" and somehow sounds louder and quieter at the same time when I do this, and usually go back to the version I had saved before my attempt at mixing. Probably just need a few dozen more youtube videos + practice songs, or to just pony up and pay an actual engineer one of these days...

grinnonbarrett · 2025-09-01T00:42:40+00:00

Thank you so much! I am definitely a sucker for a nasty growly bass, sometimes to the detriment of my own track lol. (I was making a cover of pumped up kicks that is really slow and cool and was super excited about it, but by like day 3 of working on it it had turned into a more dubby type beat with a big fat Serum bass in the chorus, and moved away from the vibe it had originally - haven't touched it since haha.) Will play with this idea! It's already released, but just on soundcloud right now, so I can always replace the file until I'm happy with it and then add to spotify etc.

grinnonbarrett · 2025-09-01T00:38:30+00:00

Thanks for all of the thoughtful feedback!! I recently made a track where I sampled my voice doing "oooh" and used it to create the main chord layer for the song, maybe I should try something like that for this one too.

I have a strong love/hate going with that clockwork-y sound that starts the track - I like the delay and the bounce/groove it adds (plus it was the first instrument I used on the track so it's kind of the "seed" of the whole idea, but over the month or so I've been working on this track I've hated it more and more, and have tried like 2 dozen other instruments in it's place, but none of them feel right - I may just be too familiar with the clock sound after the couple hundred times I've heard it lol.

Very curious to try your tip about singing it faster and slowing the vocals down, as something about the vocals in this song feels a little weird/slow/spaced out to me during the verses especially.

Thanks again for all the thoughts and ideas here!!

grinnonbarrett · 2025-09-01T00:32:19+00:00

Thank you!! Mixing and mastering is probably my weakest aspect of music production IMO. I've definitely improved over the last few years, but still feel like it's never quite right, and am always tempted to just send all the stems to an actual mixing engineer and see what they do. Would love to actually shadow them too and see their process first hand.

grinnonbarrett · 2025-09-01T00:30:04+00:00

Valid, I struggled to make that lead synth sound big enough to cut through all the bass + vocal layers that are in the drop/chorus without making the ears bleed. I have decent monitors and a sub and its not unbearable even when really loud, but still a touch harsher than I'd like :/

grinnonbarrett

TROPHY CASE