Hi Guys

I am having trouble mixing trance leads.  They seem to sound weak due to the reverb and delay been too busy I think.  When I listened to some well produced trance tracks like Darren Porter - Terraforming the leads sound very big and not too cluttered.  Same with Sean Tyas , his leads seems to have a lot of presence and don't sound too cluttered.

Have you guys any pointers ?

Should I use send FX's for my delays and reverbs.  I find using them from the synth to be messy.  What would your typical chain be for leads ?

Any info would be great thanks 

One of the things that makes it big is the sub and the noise that plays along with it. Sub fills up the lower frequencies nicely and the noise fills up the higher part. If you take away both I will sound way more empty. Other than that its more than one layer of leads and pads. All of them most likely have their own frequency range. Dont drop just any sound on eachother because each individual sound sounds nice, but all of them should fill eachother up. Each sound also have their own charachter. These parts are just things you learn by experience, there is no certain rule to it.

Haven't seen this coming by yet in the past and I need some thoughts of others on this subject.

I have a completely new room (6x3m) more or less and I designed my own basstraps and acoustic panels, but still have to cover them with colored fabrics.

The room itself is currently completely white, but I want to give it some color.

What are your thoughts of good colors to go with in a studio room? Glossy? Satin? Matte?

I'm thinking with a darker red color for the walls (not too dark) and a bit dark orange fabric for the panels. The ceiling I have no idea yet

Quite a few studios are red with orange, black or yellow which I find pretty good looking.

Post some pictures if you have.. :-)

It might work for you, it might work for you.

Here's mine
Drums,Bass,Leads,Effects and Fills, all being routed to a pre master channel.

those are my groups and i use them mostly for organization purposes (quick section mutes), and volume balance.

I find that, the more things you have to augment, the more you have to consider. I try to keep things bare bones and simple.

It's easy to get lost in detail.

Mine is pretty much like that.

- Drums/percussion
- Bass
- Leads/plucks
- Ambience/Pads/Strings
- Effects

Al routed to a pre-master and then the master.

If I just have a single instrument such as an Acid I work with inputs and not sends. Sends I just keep for the bigger (layered) stuff.

If I have ideas for some effect and it requires multiple channels to have that effect at the same time I can send those to another buss ( one before the pre-master ), but that stuff I do on the way. Basic template is what I wrote above.

I tend to do this as well. Either kickstart, LFO Tool or just simple volume automations / Velocity changes.

Why?
For me, I don't like to over compress. So within a project I may have: compressors on single inserts, compressors on groups of tracks, multiband compressors, other dynamics plugins & limiters and then compressors on the master - so everywhere is seeing a reduction in dynamic range and being compressed, therefore; since I am doing my compression elsewhere I don't also want my sidechain tool compressing the signal - for me it helps retain a little bit of dynamic range in your project. So in essence you are pulling a volume fader down and back up rather than squashing your actual source sound.
works for me.
That and these volume shaper plugins are super fast and easy to use.

Everything is so compressed these days, I prefer to work with as little compression as possible.

I see videos these days of people compressing a bass, then bus it (with other basses) and compress that, then some effects and compress again (or even a third one) then to another buss (with other groups) to compress it again, then on master again compress and in the end a loud track with no dynamics.

Ill bite.

Check out: https://soundcloud.com/james-williams-aka-artena

Says enough. :-)

What I do is when my main melody is playing I play another melody by hand underneath and just remember what sounds good or not, all by ear. This can very from pads, to plucks, to piano. From there I can do layering on those sounds making a bigger stereo image and check between stereo -> mono in the meantime. If it sounds big in mono it sounds even better in stereo.

Noise also fills up space very well.

I've tested it some time ago and it missed quite a lot of features that other daw have.

I can imagine that in the future Bitwig will beat Ableton. Right now it doesn't beat Ableton for me just yet. It has potential to be one of the best daw out there.

Layer a separated pluck on the bass /done