Week 3 · Tuesday
Humanize Aftertouch by dropping viewers into the origin loop that built the ear behind the service, so skeptical DIY artists trust who's actually sitting with their stems.
Posting window: Tuesday 7:30 PM PT
Posting times shown in Pacific Time (PT) — adjust to your audience's timezone in your scheduler.
Hook options
Pick the one you’ll use — the script opener updates to match
Bounce. Car. Back inside. Change one thing.
I couldn't hear what was wrong with my own songs.
The loop that teaches you to mix isn't a plugin. It's a parking lot.
You've bounced the same song eighteen times. I know the feeling.
There's a reason I can hear your mix faster than you can.
Script
Opener (0:00 – 0:10)
Bounce. Car. Back inside. Change one thing. That was the whole winter.
Body
Six years ago I was mixing my band's EP in a closet with foam taped to the door. It sounded great in there. Then I'd play it in the car and the low end would disappear and the vocal would be sitting out on the hood. So I'd walk back in, change one thing, bounce it, drive around the block again. Three songs. All winter. Then a friend asked me to fix her single. Then her roommate. And I realized I could hear other people's problems a lot faster than my own.
Close / CTA
That's still the job. I just stopped doing it for free.
≈ 115 words · about 46 s at single-take pace
On-screen graphics
Planned from the script at your reading pace. Times are approximate: drop each graphic over the line it belongs to.
| About | They say | Graphic | On screen |
|---|---|---|---|
| About0:00–0:03 | They sayYour hook, as you open | GraphicTitle | On screenBounce. Car. Back inside. Change one thing.Picture: a closet door swinging open, then a steering wheel — cut together fast |
| About0:09–0:12 | They say“closet with foam taped” | GraphicLabel | On screenthe closetPicture: a small closet door with foam squares taped across it |
| About0:20–0:23 | They say“vocal would be sitting out on the hood” | GraphicUnderline | On screensitting out on the hoodPicture: a car with a tiny microphone floating above the hood |
| About0:29–0:32 | They say“Three songs. All winter.” | GraphicCard | On screen3 songs / 1 winter |
| About0:40–0:43 | They say“faster than my own” | GraphicHeadline | On screenother people's problems / faster than my own |
| About0:44–0:47 | They say“stopped doing it for free” | GraphicTitle | On screenstopped doing it for free |
Paste it into Claude, ChatGPT or another AI tool to build these graphics as clips.
Production paths
- 1.Set your phone vertically at eye level, framed chest-up, with a soft lamp off to one side and your room (not a blank wall) behind you — this is a story, let the space feel lived-in.
- 2.Record the full script in a single take, start to finish, looking into the lens. Do three or four takes. Keep the one where the first four fragments — 'Bounce. Car. Back inside. Change one thing.' — land clipped and matter-of-fact, not performed.
- 3.Record a short clip of a closet door (yours or any) opening and a short clip of a steering wheel or dashboard from inside a parked car. Ten seconds each is enough.
- 4.In CapCut, drop the best take on the timeline. Trim any dead air before the first word and after the last word.
- 5.Over the first line, cut in the closet-door clip and the steering-wheel clip back to back for the first 1.5 seconds — this is the hook visual. Then back to you.
- 6.Add the on-screen graphics from the cue sheet, one per cue, over the line it belongs to. Keep the type large, white, and in one weight the whole way through.
- 7.Add auto-captions. Clean up any misheard words. Position them lower-third so they don't collide with the cues.
- 8.No music bed. Let the silence between the opening fragments do the work.
- 9.Export at 1080x1920, highest quality.
Platform captions
a closet, a car, and three songs i couldn't get right. that winter is why aftertouch exists.
Hashtags
six years ago it was a closet with foam on the door and the same three songs on repeat in the car. i could not hear what was wrong with my own stuff. turns out i could hear it on other people's. that is still the job.
Hashtags
Title
Why I became a mix engineer #mixing #homestudio
Caption
The closet-to-car loop that taught me to hear a mix — and why I run Aftertouch now. Remote mixing and mastering for independent artists at aftertouch.
Thumbnail brief
Build this in Canva — it's a design brief, not a prompt to paste.
Save a still of your face from the recording (Record → Save a frame) and open it in Canva — the brief builds everything around the face. Which frame: pick the frame right after 'Change one thing' — eyes to lens, mouth closed, flat matter-of-fact expression (not smiling, not intense)
- Crop
- 9:16 vertical, you framed chest-up and slightly off-center to the left, eyes to camera, room visible behind you (not a blank wall)
- Words
- closet to car
- Placement
- overlay text stacked on two lines in the upper-right third, large and bold; a small arrow element points from 'closet' down to 'car'
- Colors
- warm neutral background from the still, overlay text in off-white with a thin black outline, arrow in a single accent color (deep red or amber)
- Element
- a hand-drawn arrow between the two words — nothing else
Scheduling
Tool: Later
- 1.Open Later and upload the exported vertical MP4 to the media library.
- 2.Create a new post and attach the video to TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts in one multi-channel post.
- 3.Paste the TikTok caption into the TikTok slot, the Instagram caption into the Reels slot, and the YouTube description into the Shorts slot. For Shorts, set title: the Shorts title above.
- 4.Set the thumbnail (the still you saved, finished in Canva) as the cover for Reels and Shorts.
- 5.Schedule for Tuesday 7:30 PM PT.
- 6.Confirm each platform preview looks right before saving.
Lead capture
Where this should drive
This piece is soft-engage by design. Week 3 is about trust in the person behind the service, not conversion — the origin story earns comments and follows that compound into booking inquiries on the week 3 and week 4 pieces that do ask for the DM. Driving to a page here would collapse the credibility the story is building. Reply to every comment in your voice; the DMs will come from piece 9 and piece 12.