Like I appreciate the sentiment, but it's not that useful to swap vague words like "very" for more specific ones. If there was a problem with using "very," it's probably better to restructure the thought altogether. Because, for one thing, if "very" is popping out at you, that's probably a sign that the description just isn't very immersive overall.
The first thing I noticed was that the music was very loud.
I don't ditch "very" altogether in my writing, but this clearly isn't the best use of it. Let's swap it for a more descriptive modifier:
The first thing I noticed was the the music was excruciatingly loud.
As has already been stated by others many times, the more descriptive modifier does indeed improve immersion by virtue of providing the reader with more information. But what if it feels overwrought in context? Let's try it without any modifier:
The first thing I noticed was that the music was loud.
Sometimes simply removing the modifier is the move, but I'd say not this time. Now let's scrap the sentence and do it over:
The door opened and immediately the music crashed over us, so loud it felt like I'd just been hit.
Now, a shrewd connoisseur of Writer Advice will notice that this sentence is more focused on the action. i.e., I have also removed the "was." I'd like to make it clear what actually happened here: I made the sentence more immediate and immersive by focusing on action and tactile description. That's a choice readers often prefer, but it doesn't mean the writing is more mature or adept. It just means the psychic distance is closer. Let me reintroduce the "was" and switch to third-person POV so we can get an example with more distant psychic distance:
The moment the door opened, the music poured out. It was rhythmic, fast, and loud enough to make the glass in her hand shake with each crash of the bass.
Still quite a nice description, if I do say so myself. But although we, the reader, get a nice sense of what it feels like to be in the scene, we're more following the character around, rather than feeling what she is feeling. "Was" isn't noticeable here, while it is noticeable in the first 3 examples.
So what I'm trying to get at here is that "very" and "was" and any other word that Writing Advice givers fixate on aren't bad in and of themselves. The problem is that they become most noticeable when the turn-of-phrase is just too flat, repetitive, or fails to be immersive. So, rather than fixing the "very" and the "was" in moments when you start noticing them, I really recommend re-writing the thought altogether. Just to see if something better pops out on the second try.
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