Hi again and thank you for welcoming me to Round 2!
Mix:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3wk0ra0jcd1mh ... 2.wav?dl=0
So, the biggest difference right now is that I've upgraded from a i7 8700 to a i9 9900k, which gave me a lot more space to do stuff.
First, I'll start with your remarks regarding the guitar fighting the vocals and the solo guitar at the end, I've automated this.
But after I listened to the mix, I thought: yeah, it's a good sketch, now let's do it properly.
So, I've seen some debate here regarding the risers and to get creative about it, so what I did is I did a short riser in the middle of verse 1, where the drums stop, that was done by reversing the hi-hat hit and worked some magic with a bit of shimmer reverb and a filter, nothing fancy. The second riser was done at chorus 3, by reversing the chorus vox and adding a good amount of verb and eq. This was is a bit more obvious. I didn't know that I could do that in R1, but after listening to a few good mixes around here I figured "why not?", in essence I'm a songwriter-producer, so why not play a bit?
After this I added a throw delay to the chorus vocalist for chorus 2 and 3, just to fill the sonic gap at the beginning of the choruses.
I finally fixed my analog Gyraf SSL Bus Compressor, so I replaced The Glue with it on the mix bus, the threshold connections were de-soldered and it was over-compressing all the time, I had no control over it. This was done just for taste, I think I did .5db @ Ratio 2, Attack 30, Release .1, the needle was barely moving.
Next, I equalised the reverbs, so it doesn't mask the mix and the vocals, I did some final eq's on the busses to prevent masking between elements over there too, I panned the rythm guitar and the keys 50L-R, they were originally at 40L-R, which gave me a bit more stereo field.
I added some shimmer delay to the keys and sidechained the delay with the source, that helped me get a bit more of a pad-like tail, but nothing too obvious, I'm trying to create depth here, not to re-produce the song.
I tweaked a bit on my Soothe 2 instances, and tried to tidy things up, including some small volume changes and all.
All in all, I think I've improved the original track that I've submitted.
Mix Specs: -3.72 dbTP, -17.9 Lufs Integrated, -15.7 Short Term
Good Luck to everyone in R2!
Feedback is always appreciated,
Cezar Habeanu
second chorus ayoub vocals is great - trumpets needs more low end, they are very ""Schrill"" - try to find the frequencies that emphasise the