There’s a reason why great mixes pop when they hit the chorus. Because the chorus sounds more interesting than the verse! It’s a mini payoff that just keeps coming back for more.
One great way to make your chorus more interesting than the verse is to think backwards. Don’t just make the chorus busier and full of pointless tracks. Instead, head to the verses and strip them down.
The more you mix, the more you’ll discover how important the arrangement is. And as a mixer you’ll want to do everything in your power to tweak the arrangement in order to help make the mix pop.
One super simple way to create a huge sound is to create contrast. If you want the chorus of the song to pop for instance, then pan it as wide as possible, but keep the verses as narrow (or mono) as possible. It sounds easy because it is. But it works in a big way.
As a mixer you want to draw the listener’s attention in at specific moments of a song. You can do this in a variety of ways of course, but one that I find super helpful is to play with octaves of guitar parts.
A quick way to emphasize a guitar part is to select part of it, copy it, and pitch it down an octave. Sure it won’t sound natural, but if you bury it just under the original it can thicken up your guitar work very nicely.
Doubles are one of the most effective ways to fill out a mix. They give you a natural chorus effect as well as more panning options. But what can you do if you never actually recorded any doubles? Simply copying a part won’t do it. We need something else.
What makes a double sound so good, is the slight variance in performance. You never play it exactly the same way twice. So in order to recreate this in your DAW you need to fudge some parts around as if you they were a second performance. It’s all an illusion.
Do you ever second guess your volume levels near the end of a mix? Yeah, I tend to lose my mind on this when mixing. You think you have a track at the best volume level possible, but you aren’t sure. It can be maddening.
One simple and effective way to find that volume sweet spot of a track is to implement the 4db “rule”. It’s not so much a rule as it is a helpful framework for fine tuning your mix.
When you get to the end of a mix, things can get tricky. One part of a track might seem just a hair too loud, but turning it down just makes it impossible to hear. And if you make a volume change on one track, it can affect how another track is perceived.
When I was first introduced to the concept that by simply hearing the initial attack of a note, the human mind can fill in the rest so to speak, I was blown away. This simple principle can really open things up for you in the mixing realm.
One thing many home or project recorded tracks lack is a sense of cohesion. It’s likely because everything was recorded at different times in not so musical spaces (i.e. a bedroom). You can be left with disjointed sounding tracks, and that’s no fun.
A great way to give your tracks that unity they desperately need is to “glue” them together with a simple reverb effect. A touch of verb on your tracks (the same verb) is a quick and easy way to give your mix a sense of space and focus.
So much of good mixing is good arranging. Part of your job as a mixer is to keep the listener engaged, and you do that by creating movement and variety throughout the song. One easy opportunity for this is to use multiple vocal delays and switch between them.
One thing I like to do is to create a really short delay in the verse, giving the vocal a lively, raw sound. And then open it up to a more epic style echo in the chorus to change up the feel entirely. It’s easy to do, but it can make all the difference.
Sometimes the best effect is the one you don’t hear. I know it’s true with vocal delays. As much as you want to hear them ring out when a vocal phrase ends, they get in the way when they swirl all over the vocalist as he is singing a line. You turn it down to avoid this problem, but then you don’t hear enough delay at all.
The smart delay is really a dynamic delay. One that knows when to turn itself down (getting out of the way of the vocal) and when to turn itself back up to echo out the awesomeness. You can set this up with a regular old delay plugin in your DAW, with just a little help from a compressor with a sidechain.
Are your guitars (or anything) fighting your lead vocal? It’s a common problem, one that can be remedied with things like EQ and volume automation. But if that’s not enough, sometimes you can setup a compressor to turn down the guitars only when the vocal is singing.
With a sidechain and a key input, you can tell a compressor to “look” to another track for when to flip on or off. In this example we want the vocal to dictate when a compressor should turn down some guitars. It’s simple, it’s powerful, it’s helpful. Let’s take a look.
Graham Cochrane is a creative and versatile producer, engineer, songwriter, and worship leader based out of Tampa, FL. He provides remote recording, editing, mixing, and mastering services to clients worldwide through his service Mobile Studio Plus.
As the founder of The Recording Revolution, Graham's articles and tutorials have been featured worldwide by Avid, Presonus, Editors Keys, and Behringer to name a few, reaching readers in over 40 countries.
For more information and samples of Graham's work, please visit www.grahamcochrane.com.
There's a reason why great mixes pop when they hit the chorus... http://t.co/pd765KQ74 hours ago
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5 Minutes To A Better Mix II: The Minimal Verse – Part 28 of 31 http://t.co/pd765KQ711 hours ago
