More Powerful Chorus with Mixing

How to get a more powerful chorus? That’s the question I kept asking myself when comparing my mixes to real commercial pro mixes. It might be a valid question for you too. It’s a bummer when you think you’ve got an explosive chorus that really hits you in the face, but when it kicks in… It doesn’t really pop out from the rest of the song. Sound familiar?

There’s a lot that can be done with arrangement, as I already covered earlier in another post. Your song needs to be good, you can’t get away from that. In case the song’s well written and arranged, the good news is that little mixing moves can take it even further and closer to those pro mixes. Mixing can take a good song to another level, but it can’t take a bad song and turn it to gold. So what are the ways to get more power into a chorus with mixing?

How to Get More Power into a Chorus with Mixing?

Usually it’s hard to pinpoint just one thing in a mix that makes the difference. We’re listening to complex mixes with multiple arrange & mixing moves going on simultaneously. By combining good songwriting, thoughtful arrangement and some well placed mixing strategies, your choruses are going to gain that power you’re looking for. Here are a couple of tested and proven concrete mixing moves for you to benefit from:

Mix the Loudest Parts First

Once you start mixing a song, you want to mix the loudest parts (usually choruses) first. In order for the chorus to be powerful, the other parts can’t be quite that strong. They have to be backed down a little bit so the chorus has room to be huge. Does that make any sense?

If the last chorus is the biggest, then nothing before that can’t be as huge. By mixing the last and the biggest chorus first, you can then drop elements and dial things down in other parts before that. It’s easier to mix the loudest part first, because you can use all the tracks and tricks at your disposal to make it huge. Whereas if you use all of them in the first chorus, how are you planning to make the next one even bigger? That’s the thing, you can’t. You’re heading for a dead end.

Tonality

Harnessing the power of contrast is the name of the game. Contrast can be used in various ways to lift up the energy in the chorus. Tonal wise, you could make verses thinner and choruses fuller or perhaps verses darker and choruses brighter. By using EQ to filter out some low or top end is a great way to make your verses seem thinner or darker. For example, drums, vocals, synths, guitars or even all of them could be filtered.

You can bypass those filters when the chorus starts. The mix opens up nicely and listener’s  ears and focus are awakened. The chorus sounds more exciting. As a real life example, take a listen to Bring Me the Horizon – Run. They’ve rolled out a lot of top end in the intro and verse and bring it in when the chorus hits. It’s subtle, but without a doubt noticeable.

Width

Another way to exploit the power of contrast is width. You could keep pretty thigh stereo image in the verse and then open it wide up in the chorus. This could be done by panning your existing tracks more towards the sides or by introducing new tracks panned hard left and right.

For example, pan your two guitar tracks narrowly in the verse and wider in the chorus. If you’re going to introduce new instruments, you could bring another guitar track panned hard to the left and a synth panned hard to the right. When changing from narrow to wide stereo image, it feels instantly bigger.

Rise Against does this really well both on their albums and liveshows. They are sort of old-fashioned punk band so they’re not using any synths or (almost any) backing tracks. Just drums, bass, guitars and singing. Regardless, their choruses are huge compared to verses, because of backing vocals widening them up nicely. Take a listen to Architects for example.

Reverb

Space, in terms of dry versus wet is a great way to utilize the power of contrast. Your chorus could be more spacious with a lot of reverb, whereas verses could be more dry. It’s all about keeping the listener focused and offering something interesting. From a dry verse to a spacious chorus could just create the lift that it needs.

Listen to how For the Imperium utilizes reverb and delay in their song Ignition. Once the song goes back into the verse, you’ll notice how much more dry and in your face the vocals are.

Volume

Lifting the volume of individual instruments from verse to chorus is a powerful way to get some power into your chorus. They can either be considerably louder, or boosted just a tiny bit. You can lift the volume of pretty much anything, while it’s pretty common to boost drums’ overheads and the parallel compressed track to lift up the energy.

Consider also experimenting with synths, pads and percussion if you could create excitement with their volume. These both apply in Biblical by Biffy Clyro. Drums get significantly punchier and synths lift the whole chorus out of the roof.

Automation

Automation is a tool to execute these mixing moves. You can automate filters, panning, reverbs, delays and volume, without needing to make separate tracks for everything. With automation you can also introduce “underlying” instruments (such as synth pads that you don’t necessarily notice right away) by lifting their volume up just momentarily.

You can guide the listener’s focus wherever you want to. Lift the first hit of cymbals, guitar chords or bass notes to snap the attention of the listener. In addition to guiding focus, it’s a sneaky way to add power to the start of a chorus.

Summary

Biblical is definitely a great example of a song where the chorus just explodes through the speakers. They’ve combined smashing songwriting, smart arranging and brilliant mixing. You can probably find all the mixing tips mentioned in this post from that piece of art.

To sum up, mix the loudest parts first and harness the power of contrast. You can use automation to carry these moves forward. Together with these arrangement moves, you’ll create intense and powerful choruses, guaranteed.

Download my information packed PDF-guides to help you further with songwriting:

5 Steps to Create Music Faster  (..and avoid the writer’s block!)

6 Step Guide to Realistic Midi Drums