How To Make Your Chorus Explode

When we want to create a bigger impact, we often add things. But sometimes, you can achieve a greater impact by taking things away instead…

Hey there! This is Jason Moss from BehindTheSpeakers.com.Today I want to share with you a mixing trick that will help you make your choruses hit harder.

When we think about creating a bigger impact, we often think about adding things. Let me add an impact sound…more bass…more high end…add more tracks to something, right?

But in fact, often times, we can actually achieve a greater impact by taking things away. It seems counterintuitive, but by creating a moment of smallness before a moment of bigness, we can actually make that big moment feel even bigger.

I want to show you how I did this in a recent mix. This is a track called “Record High, Record Low.” It’s a band called GIVERS. This isn’t the mix that appeared on the album. It was a separate mix for sync.

I want to play for you the ramp up to the ending of the track.

Now you can hear in that section right before the last chorus, the arrangement is actually doing a really great job at creating that smallness. Everything drops out, there’s just that vocal for a second, and then the whole chorus hits in and we have the whole kitchen sink, right?

But I actually enhanced this further by actually muting all the reverb and delay…all my effects returns…just in that little section. I actually made it a little bit smaller. Suddenly we just have this bone-dry vocal that sticks out like a sore thumb. And then, when the chorus comes in, suddenly there are all these effects…and the reverb and the depth and the width. We’re creating this picture that goes like this [motions with hands], just for a second, and then just explodes into the last chorus.

So, the takeaway here is: don’t be afraid to take things away to actually create contrast in your mixes and really bring these sections to life.

Hope you found this useful. Check out more mixing tips at BehindTheSpeakers.com. Until next time.

Features the song “Record High, Record Low” by GIVERS.