Let's talk about dynamics in mixes (specially country)

you should post this question in the Pensado Students facebook group. a lot of those cats are pro mixers who work on that music.

Very interested in this sort of thing myself: what is done to the mix, and why.

From what I've seen at Pensado is that it's a lot of non-pros

...that you're lucky if you find 5 or 6db of dynamic range in any of them? 

I personally automate just about every single element in a mix. Maybe not every single drum mic...but the drums for sure, the bass for sure, guitars, pads, vocals (duh), everything really. I often add some type of bigger sub element for choruses. Not with R-Bass or any of the plug ins that do the octave above but with a big fat pure-ish sine wave-ish synth. Really depends on the genre and the song.
I feel like I have, MAX, 4 db to play with volume wise. Usually less so I have to create the perception of more dynamic change than is actually occurring (if dynamics equals volume, which is really only part of it).

CONTRAST is the word I use. Think of comic book art. The lightest colors are bordering the darkest colors. Contrast.

So what I try and do is create a big change if I want the chorus to pop. Not a volume change necessarily but a change in, well...colors.

I might keep the intro and first verse less bass heavy but balanced so you don't notice, then the chorus can get big on the bottom, let the second verse be a little bigger than the first and then thin out the pre chorus (for contrast) then drop that big bass on em again in the chorus. That's one of a million ways to do it, and one of a hundred ways you might do it in one song.

My point is I'm looking for contrast. That's a great way to manipulate perception. I want to compete with every other mix out there so I'm limited when it comes to volume changes. Listen to Brauer's mixes and watch em on a digital meter...big dynamic shifts but not a lot of volume change. That dude is the master!

My experience with large volume changes in my mixes is that they sound stupid after they get mastered. The loud sections end up sounding QUIETER than the quiet sections. The ME has got to use high pass filters to limit the way they do for pop or country or mainstream and that will castrate any mix if there are big volume jumps. That's my experience anyway.

I'm rambling but my point is contrast. Whatever you gotta do to get it.

Something that should be mentioned is arrangement as jazznoise suggests. Usually your choruses have more elements to kick it out. Bring it down in the verses by scaling back instumentation and vocals. I think that could be one part of what your perceiving.

What you are really talking about is the musical arrangement and the not mix or dynamics.

About all you can do is to swing the axe on elements in the verses if you can't change the arrangement to something that works better. The problem with automation is that it often only sounds right on the speakers used to create it. This is true of all genres. The point of buying a recording is to listen to it repeatedly without growing bored. That really demands that no two moments in the song ever be identical.

That's what I'm really talking about yes. I know that in order to make the chorus open and sound like that, the arrangement of instruments has to change, the drums need to go to a more forward beat, and the bass needs to tighten and move. But what I wanted to try and get out of some people is what do you do if the arrangement isn't there, how are you changes things up? 

I've been sent mixes from Nashville that mix themselves, you just push the faders up and what comes out is just like what you hear on the radio 99% of the time, there's nothing really to it. But, sometimes I'll get an album and specifically the one i'm on right now, they are trying to make a demo session from Nashville into a highly produced sounding session. What am I to do? Well if I hand it back and it doesn't have that sound my excuses can be to blame them, or, I can ask those that know and have been in that situation how they deal with this, and hand them back something they get giddy over. Maybe they sell 25k albums and come back with the cash to get proper arrangement. 

So, I made this thread for my own personal gain  , and I thought that if we could get some post's flowing it might help some people out that are dealing with these problems, it's pretty common, and you're 100% right, it's arrangement. 

You know I really like the Slate one. I just picked that up for like 39 bux or something really cheap like that. I used to program drums for demo songs, and if I wanted to get them real I would have to go over the velocities of every single hit, and change those up, sometimes adding that human thing that BFD has when I used it. I used to make my own rooms too and fiddle with that until it was close. But it's incredibly hard to do what you're doing, I hope I never have to go back to that land again, but I did buy that Slate SSD4 for this little demo a few weeks back and I thought it sounded really good. 

I've done that, editing every velocity, humanizing, but it's still blah, it's partly my lack of will to become an expert drum programmer. Still, I do wish Superior Drummer had a choice of say.. 3 snares per loop, soft, middle and louder, instead of two per sample.

It only has two sample layers??? That's pretty weak man, that's your problem right there. I used to just make an instrument track in PT, do 4 bars of the groove of the basic pattern of the whole song. And then come back through and build my fills and put my ghost notes/side stick/fills/crahses/ whatever, it makes it quicker like that. Then after I had the track built I would come back through and do the velocity level's. But if you're only getting two velocity layers per sample that's not near enough to make things seem real.

Thanks John, jerome. I may be wrong in my description, but when I use Superior Drummer I hear the snare tone change twice in a four beat patter, loud, softer, loud softer. The problem is the "softer" is too soft, I want the louder tome to ease up 15%. but the tone to stay the same. The velocity change doesn't quite get it right.

John, I have the Axiom Pro 61 keyboard, and it has drum pads on it, but I've never gone near them. Anyone here ever tried those pads on the AxiomPro?

Maybe I'll look into that when I'm not so pressed for time.