Headphones on the Back Porch
Last night I sat alone on my back porch, headphones on, and listened to “Fall Under and Drown” all the way through. Not critically. Just listening, the way I’d listen to anyone else’s song.
I heard exactly what a handful of strangers had already told me this week.
The Story Behind the Song
The song itself goes back almost thirty years, to a relationship that fell apart because of my own foolish pride more than anything else. She was an artist. She’s the reason I picked up a guitar seriously in the first place, the reason I know who The Who and Phish are, the reason there was ever a band called Down on Jane. I finally recorded it, alone, in my home studio, decades after I wrote it. That felt like a win before a single reviewer ever pressed play.
What the Reviews Said
Then I sent it out through SubmitHub, and the notes started coming in.
A blog in Slovakia said the drumming and the mix “weren’t grabbing” them, even though some of the sounds in the song were cool and interesting. A blog in the US was more direct: “I had a pretty hard time with the mix on this one. I really think the production quality needs to be improved for this to stand out.” A Spotify playlister in the US called it “a bit rough around the edges,” looking for a more complete mix. A curator in Australia said the production felt “a little too raw” for the playlist. And a listener in Italy went track by track through the mix itself: not enough dynamic range, the vocal sitting too far back behind the instrumental, the synth too monotonous and too present through the verses, the drums in the chorus sitting above everything else.
They Were Right, and That’s the Best Part
Sitting on that porch last night, headphones on, I heard every one of those things myself. The vocal really is buried. The synth really does crowd the verses. The chorus drums really do stomp on everything else. They were right. Every single note.
Strangers Who Owe Me Nothing
And here’s the part I actually love about this: these are people I’ve never met and will probably never meet. They owe me nothing. I’m not paying them, I’m not friends with them, I have no leverage over them at all. And they still took the time to listen closely enough to hand me a free, accurate diagnosis of my own mix. Strangers on different continents, speaking different languages, with zero contact with each other, independently pointed at the same handful of problems. That’s not a bad review. That’s a gift.
The same batch of feedback also had a curator telling me the writing had “cool hooks” and “strong arrangements” and that he really enjoyed the performances, he just wasn’t the right playlist for it. Another reviewer said the melody and performance were full of emotion and that my potential is incredible, she just found it a little slow for her list. So the song is there. Strangers just helped me see exactly how to make it hit harder.
Still Learning, Still Finishing
I record and produce everything myself, in a home studio, without a team of engineers checking my work before it goes out. That means I’m the songwriter, the performer, the mixer, and the mastering engineer, and I’m going to be better at some of those jobs than others. Mixing is the one I’m still climbing the learning curve on. Getting handed a free, specific roadmap, bring the vocal forward, give the synth room to breathe, let the chorus drums sit instead of stomp, push the dynamics, from people who have absolutely nothing to gain by being honest with me, is honestly one of the coolest parts of putting music out into the world.
A few years ago I probably would have read all of that and felt discouraged. Sitting on the porch last night, I mostly just felt grateful. Bad news turned out to be good news. These people helped me, and we’ve never even met.
That’s really what this whole album has turned into for me: proof that you can still be in the middle of learning your craft in your late 40s, still making mistakes a more experienced engineer wouldn’t make, and still have something worth finishing and sending out anyway, with total strangers rooting for it to be better along the way.
Thank You
So thank you to everyone who took the time to actually listen and write something specific back. I heard it myself last night, out loud, alone, and you were right. The next mix will be better because of you, and the one after that better still.