Sounds like you're making progress! Love the changes you've started to make to the chords, and the little extra notes add a LOT of character. Build snare sounds crisp, though it's unfortunately louder than your main snare so it still feels a bit too present.
I'm worried that there's a bit too much reverb on the synths in the build, as it feels very washed out. Mixwise, there's really just a bit too much going on. Here's a way to approach your mix that might be useful:
Think of the mixdown like an empty glass cup. The frequencies in your mixdown are the water. The more frequencies you add, either through adding a new sound or through processing a sound you already have, the closer that cup gets to filling up. Once you get to the top, anything extra will just spill over and be lost in the mix - our ears have trouble deciding what to focus on and it ends up sounding bad, or at least not as good as it could be. So you want to try and cut out as many excess and unnecessary frequencies as possible. Sometimes, this is as simple as turning down the gain on a particular sound. Sometimes, it's adding an EQ and removing as much as possible without compromising the integrity of the sound. Sometimes, it's panning the sounds so that you can get more room to fill your cup.
If you have trouble mixing as you add sounds or trying to mix everything against some set point like -6 dB of headroom or whatever, try a total reset mix - save a new version of your project, reset all the pan pots, disable any processing that isn't part of the sound design, and pull all the faders down to -Inf. Bring the most important element of your mix (in dance music, this almost always tends to be the kick) to your reference point of 0 dB or -6 dB or -12 dB or whatever you want it to be, then either work upwards in frequency or work in order of sonic importance and raise the volume faders/move the pan pots until you get as good a mix as possible JUST from the volume and panning.
If you compare that with your current mix, you might find that certain things are nowhere near as loud as they were before, and hopefully your mix will sound much clearer and open, even before processing. Then it's just a matter of EQing and Compressing (but only as necessary) and voila!
Keep going! Can't wait to hear the finished product.
I also layered another synth I made over the main one only for certain notes to emphasize specific note changes and harmonies. After listening more the 2 biggest things I noticed was the high hat was overall too low, lead snare had too much high and was overall to loud, and the secondary snare/hit was too quiet and could be eq'd better.
Also I don't think too much reverb is what's causing that as the only reverb I have is on the lead synth and it has a short decay. Maybe a re-eq on the freq that are in the reverb would help. I'm going to attempt a tighter mix and if I can't get one then I'll try your alternative method. Sounds interesting and like it would work!
Thank you for the kind words, feedback, and continued help. I personally appreciate it a lot!
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the best projects take time.
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