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Tips on cleaning up the chorus?
His review put to words a lot of the thoughts I had on the choruses.
You can do a few things to bring the vocs forward:
--Parallel compression to emphasize some of the vocal brightness (take a copy of the vocal comp, put an extreme high-pass filter on it, compress it heavily >20:1, and put it low in the mix
--Put a delay on the vocal on each side, one delay 1/4 note, the other at 1/8 notes. Put them low in the mix, too.
--Using volume automation, boost only the lead transients on each word of the vocal during the busy parts. There's a psycho-acoustic effect that causes our brains to latch on to a sound when you simply hear the first consonant of a word. (Use a pencil tool to just do a quick 2 db rise in volume on just the lead transients)
Just a couple ideas.
For the drums, maybe you could do similar parallel compression technique on a copy of the snare track, but use a transient designer plugin to emphasize the attack and de-emphasize the sustain. Mix to taste.
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The mix may also benefit in the thickest chorus sections by de-emphasizing certain instruments (taking them back a db or two).
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Really, IMO, this is just about tweaks. You have a really good mix and tune going on.