what do you honestly think of the music, overall?
I think you'll have a lot of trouble finding fans with this music.
After Hours is a really dissonant track. The dissonance unfortunately only seems to make the track difficult to parse what the musical intention is. I can tell it's there, but it's messy and made all the worse by the extremely muddy bass and overall very messy mix.
There are many frequencies that are fighting each other, I would say that is especially so in the mid range from roughly around 600hz up into 1khz.
While the drums are admittedly pretty cool (kind of a NIN vibe - I dig it), and the grimy bass riff is neat, due to the mixing and overall musical writing everything gets lost. It seems like an eclectic collection of ideas without much meaning, nor much consideration.
Additionally, the stereo space is used poorly. It seems there is a lot of LFO stereo panning happening, especially with the...uh..."lead" synths (though they are so buried in the mix I feel like lead is not the correct term). Everything else doesn't seem to have it's place in the stereo field. This is a matter of opinion, but generally, I avoid having sounds auto-pan, in fact, I rarely automate pan as I prefer giving instruments a distinct location in the stereo field. Of course, LFOs and automation for panning exist, so of course you can use them, I would just be mindful because the stereo field is a very easy way to create a clean mix that feels alive, and if utilized improperly it will just feel like a very wide mono track, making everything lack space and just otherwise feel way more messy.
Finally, on After Hours, it really overstays its welcome. While it
is an eclectic collection of ideas, once again, the mixing only serves to ruin this by making it feel like the song never progresses. From the beginning to the end it still feels like the same song. A story was never told.
Wait! Last note on After Hours: the transition at the end is really hard on the ears. I'm not sure what cans you are monitoring your tracks on, but you really need to balance your overall master mix. The song has overly emphasized bass but then the transition has harsh trebles.
Better Be Careful seems to have more of the same problem. This time the hat's trebles are a little bit too harsh and are too wet with reverb. The late reflections on the reverb need to be dampened or reduce the overall wet/dry. The reverb is ruining the mix.
It also feels like just an extension to After Hours, it doesn't really feel like its own track. But even if it is its own track, it begins as quickly as it ends and felt like it served no purpose musically. Once again, a story was never told with this track.
I would wager a guess that you also aren't using a reverb send either. Having a reverb send will help all the instruments feel like they are part of the same song. It's the glue that brings everything together. Of course, with the amount of reverb you are using on individual instruments, adding a reverb send is going to make them even more wet, so I just advise reducing the overall amount of reverb.
My overall advice on how to improve yourself is to get more acquainted with an equalizer. I highly recommend using both MEq and ReaEQ - MEq is semi-freeware, part of the free Melda Plugin collection, and ReaEQ is freeware and is part of the ReaPlugs package. MEq is great more making gross adjustments to the overall tone and I would call it's overall signature "mostly transparent but somewhat silky". ReaEQ is great for making finer adjustments and is also great for sidechaining and frequency sweeps. I would call it's overall signature "dull-ly transparent".
I would also recommend utilizing a simple channel strip to help organize stereo fields, channel phase, and gain-staging your effects.
Utility is an incredibly lightweight, simplistic channel strip for just this and is also free. (side note, although I rarely use stereo scopes now-days, it's sometimes helpful to visualize your stereo space. The free Melda Plugin Collection comes with a variety of ultility plugins, including a stereo scope.)
Lastly on production, I recommend investing in a proper set of cans. The most widely recommended and readily available are the Audio Technica ATH-M50x. These are used by practically every podcaster and bedroom musician, therefore they are easy to find new or - better yet - used. I also used Sennheiser HD280 Pros. They are tanks and are constantly recommended for live-performing musicians due to how resilient they are. The downside for producers is that they have quite the roll-off in the trebles. Both the ATH-M50x and the HD280 Pros cost about the same.
For writing, things get more subjective, but I think it's a fair assessment to make that you really should experiment more with what you are writing. Dissonant tracks are fine, in fact, I've written my fair share of those. However, you should also explore various styles and rhythms, as well as different modes.
One thing that helps me on occasion is taking one of my tracks and attempting to rewrite it in a different genre. Usually this becomes an exercise in trying to break down your song to it's fundamental levels to understand it so that way you can rebuild it appropriately for the new genre.
Anyways best of luck.
Good to see you again after all this time!
