Hannes Keseberg - You Know Better (PlasticDish Mix)

[Mike Senior]

Hi plasticdish -- nice warm lead-vocal sound and plenty of nifty effects touches here! Strong balance, sensible overall tonality (maybe a little less 130Hz?), and decent stereo width too, so this is clearly a strong contender from the start. Some specific thoughts:

• That fill before the second chorus is one of my favourite of the whole contest -- it's seems so natural, and yet it still catches you by surprise the way the drums drop out and there's that suspicion of reverse-envelope guitar. Wish I'd thought up that one myself!
  
• The cymbals feel like they get a bit overbearing during the Mid-section. You might get a more feel-good effect if you favour the hammond and backing vocals more instead, and then drop down a little further with the arrangement (or at least the effects levels) for Chorus 3.
  
• Nice communal 'group get-together' vibe for the Outro. This was a section transition that foxed a lot of people. but you get a nice payoff here by making good use of the mob vocals, claps, and hammond.
  
• The snare feels a bit underpowered by comparison with the kick, so the Reintro doesn't quite deliver the rhythmic drive I'd hope. Similarly, I reckon that fabulous fill would probably have been even more compelling had the snare tone been meatier.
  
• I love the depth implied by the effects on the whistles and mob vocals before Chorus 1, but it'd have been further enhanced if the verses in general had been a bit tighter by comparison with the choruses and Reintro/Outro -- something that'd also have helped improve the long-term dynamics.
  
• The vocal balancing's reasonable, but the low-frequency variability is still making that vocal fader a bit unstable during Verse 3, and the switches between falsetto and chest voice in the Choruses are also reducing intelligibility more than I'd hope.
  
• It sounds like there's some kind of slow vibrato on the Hammond during the final fade-out, which makes it seem like the instrument's tuning is drifting. It doesn't bug me elsewhere, but I'd be tempted to avoid that potentially unflattering final impression using automation if possible.
  

Thanks for posting -- and congratulations on finding such favour with Hannes himself!