Heard a kid at the San Salvador vinyl shop say my hi-hats were 'too wet'

I was browsing records and some teenager pointed at my headphones and told his friend my kick pattern sounded like a leaky faucet. Made me go home and actually dry out my mix for the first time in a year, has anyone else gotten production advice from random strangers?

2 comments

2 Comments

harperwright11d ago

Got roasted by a random guy at a coffee shop last year who said my snare sounded like a cardboard box... took me a week to realize he was right. I started layering a sharper clap underneath and actually tuned my snares to match the key of the track, made a huge difference. Strangers have no reason to sugarcoat things, sometimes that's exactly what you need. Ended up ditching three of my go-to samples for cleaner ones just because some dude in line at Starbucks told me my hats were "muddy.

roberts.jordan10d ago

That's wild that a stranger at Starbucks actually knew what muddy hats sounded like lol. When you tuned your snares to match the key, did you use a specific plugin or just pitch them manually until they felt right? I've been trying to key-match my percussion samples but half the time I can't tell if I'm making it better or just tricking myself into hearing an improvement.