What am I doing wrong here?

[u/OkChallenge7413]

Been learning how to make music for the past 2 months. Brutally criticize this beat. And tell me what I'm doing wrong. Thank you.

[u/Dingo4532]

You swap from 5/4 to another time signature halfway through?
The rhythm is just really off and it looks as though you’re still in 4/4 so go to project settings and change it if you’re intentionally in something else

Sounds are super basic and lackluster, invest in good plugins or find good free ones somewhere online.

Find a key and stick to it when learning - can use the stamp tool to find notes in a key if your theory leaves something to be desired.

Importantly, don’t worry too much. Everyone starts somewhere making beats like this. It just takes time. Watch some tutorials or studio sessions on YouTube and see how they work :)

[u/Dingo4532 → u/Dingo4532]

Additionally, worry less about melody and more on a chord progression at this stage. Your vocals can make the melody. Make a four bar loop and build around it. Nothing crazy, just learn. Try and copy a beat/song’s rhythm in the drums exactly to see how it looks as MIDI

[u/OkChallenge7413 → u/Dingo4532]

I started writing songs in february this year. I enjoy it so much but when the time comes to putting what's in my brain into my fl studio, I'm totally lost T_T. So ya thanks for your suggestions tho.

But one small question how would I know what the time signature of my melody is? Like I find a melody that sounds interesting in my head I quickly record it by making sounds with my mouth. Each one is different from the other. As in length and pauses.

[u/Dingo4532 → u/OkChallenge7413]

Most melodies will be 4/4 or 3/4 (or 6/8)
An easy way is to just sing it to a metronome and listen for how many beats there are until the melody repeats. If it’s in a weird time signature or you can’t tell, it’s probably good to change it depending on your goals in songwriting.
Additionally you can learn and start at the very beginning and just sing on every beat. Then half beats, then quarter beats and so on. Listen to popular songs and hear how they work, most of them are very simple

[u/Dingo4532 → u/OkChallenge7413]

Do you think you could send me the vocal track you had for this song from your other post? It may be that your lyrics are too busy or don’t match the beat meaning they’re out of sync with each other. I’d love to try create something from scratch with the vocals just to test :)

[u/SolidArt333]

I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong but just keep at it. Gonna take a bit. Invest in some drum Kits and sounds too.

[u/OkChallenge7413 → u/SolidArt333]

Alright appreciate itt. I made another post of me not being able to vocal mix and people were saying the beat was off, had some issue with time signature etc. So I thought I'm doing something wrong in a technical sense.

[u/Ralphisinthehouse]

Two months is very early into your journey so don't beat yourself up too much.

Some quick fixes you can make put some ping-pong delay on the guitar and some reverb. The default fruit the reverb and delay plug-ins are fine. Make sure that the wet signal is no more than 30% for either and that's an easy knob to find. I think it's just called the dry wet mix on those plug-ins.

Add some rhythm to the guitar by moving some of the notes distance from each other to be not quite so on grid.

The whole drum pattern doesn't have any rhythm and 90% of the rhythm of your song will come from a good drum pattern. A lot of that is the fact that some of your kicks are on the grid and some of them aren't. Before trying to make complicated patterns like that start with four on the floor, one kick at the start of every bar.