Too Bright

[pauli]

I'm liking the rhodes sound in the beginning. That's because I love pretty much anything that's snappy.

We already talked about how hard this song is to pull off. But the tonal change in the vocals from verse to chorus is quite jumping. I also personally felt the bright vocals in the verses slightly contribute to a feeling the verses sound a bit disparate EQ-wise; like you unnecessarily carved a lot of space for all of the instruments. I think featuring a darker vocal on the verses would glue verses better into the chorus. And maybe darker verses altogether might make the chorus jump out even more (which IMO is never a bad thing).

I'm really liking how the chorus hits hard here! People shouldn't be afraid to push those faders.

Since this is one of the few mixes where you can hear how the chorus vocals blend together, it becomes evident how badly they're out of tune! I know it's not really the mixing engineer's job, but the way to improve these vocals would probably be to start by throwing some auto-tune on them.

The very last word on the choruses "...iiit's true" gets totally lost in the mix. Ride it up! These are those small things that separate the great mix from an OK one. (<-merely for future reference).

I'm gonna throw couple of suggestions regarding mixing hip-hop/electronic music in general. You know, some things that I personally would've added to the chorus:

Since reverb on the hihats sound stupid, I've noticed a bit of stereo flanger is a good way to add some width to 808ish hihats. Set the flanger as a stereo return and turn mix all the way to wet (which means you won't hear the flanging effect if you'd listen to the aux solo'ed). This way you can also pan the dry hat off center if the need arises, works especially well if you have multiple hihat tracks (which are all fed to the aux flanger).

While rock music benefits from that short dense non-linear reverb, electronic snares are OK with long plate which doesn't have that thick onset. If you have any impulse responses from Lexicon 480 reverbs (at least impulses from the factory presets are in wide circulation) try the "snare plate" factory preset and use that as an inspiration for further el snare reverb designing. As with most reverbs, you're not really suppose to hear it amidst the kitchen sink.

Thanks for your observations, Spede. This is one of those mixes where you (or maybe just I) really need an objective ear to get your head straight. I'd spent a good hour several times notching out all the ugly stuff in the chorus vocals to make them less fatiguing only to find they went from sounding harsh to sounding like the guy got locked in a closet... one that had some stinky, slick stuff on the floor (and he doesn't want to find out what it is).

I don't think I've ever tried a flanger in parallel... definitely going to try that.