The vocals sit good in one section but then in the next section they sound quiet even though it's at the same volume.

Nothing unusual about that: vocals (as with a lot of non-electronic signals/instruments) have a very wide dynamic range; frequency content depends on distance between the vocalist and the mic; etc etc

If you need to make different vocal clips louder, or automate the volume up and down in different sections of the mix, that's totally in the rules (as long as you don't overload the whole mix as a result)... in the old days mix engineers got expert at "riding faders" to solve the same problem.

For sybillance... a de-esser, or a dynamic EQ (I like Tokyo Dawn's Nova), will help cut hissy, sybillant frequencies (go hunting around 6 - 9 kHz?) when they get too loud... without damaging the frequency spectrum when they don't.

It's just nature's way of telling you to make terrifying abstract techno.

I like that EQ curve. The regular dips make it look like your room's kind of comb filtering your sound, which I guess maybe makes sense if you've got echos coming off the walls?

Don't forget to subtract all the vowels from your name. My new producer name is VWLS.

It gives ... a... little extra spice in your mix.

Exactly that, it's like a quarter-teaspoon of mild chilli powder in tomato pasta sauce - you don't want to burn your throat, just want to colour the mix slightly warmer.

Pro-Q2 is superb for controlled EQing.

For a start, Fabfilter's interfaces are fantastic - you get a great visualisation of what you're doing to the sound.

Pro-Q2 gives you all sorts of options in terms of EQ curves...

If all it had was its "basic" EQing features with Mid-Side processing it'd still be my favourite EQ for sculpting sound, but it's also got lots of other stuff I haven't even got into yet (frequency-spectrum matching, linear phase EQing etc)... it's very, very good. Not super-colourful, but ridiculously useful.

For filters... I like a bit of dirt so I personally prefer Sugarbytes WOW2 to Volcano, because WOW is immediately coloured.

Saturn's great too: it's not the only multi-band saturator/distortion plug on the market, but I'm starting to play with features like the band-specific dynamics, and tuned feedback, and again it's got an immaculate user interface.

There are lots of ways to spread a single sound out in stereo:

• Autopanning them so they swoosh across the stereo field
• Using "doubler" plugins that use short delays panned left and right (look out for mono compatibility problems)
• Longer, tempo-synced delays panned more or less hard left and right
• Stereo reverbs... maybe with some mid-side processing to widen the reverb?
• Chorusing (watch out for mono compatibility again)
• Xfer Records/Massive's "Dimension Expander" effect - like a stereo delay/reverb hybrid but designed to be mono compatible
• Using a stereo widening processor on the sound itself (mono compatibility warning!)

Mono compatibility? Well... if you take a sound, and a slightly delayed copy of the sound, that were panned left and right, and you turn the audio into mono... then the two copies of the sound will interfere with each other. Depending on the length of the delay between them, certain frequencies will be boosted and others will cancel out. Worst case, that sound will be degraded or made much more quiet by conversion to mono. Any effect that creates stereo using delay might be susceptible to this kind of problem.

But there are alternatives to just widening one sound.

One trick often used with vocals is to record 2 or 3 takes of a verse or chorus, and pan one hard left and one hard right. ...And maybe a 3rd, placed in the centre. This wins you a load of stereo width, and it's mono compatible, because the sounds aren't exactly the same: they're separate recordings, so there'll be differences in pitch, timing and tone, so if you collapse the stereo mix to mono, they shouldn't cancel each other out significantly.

And there are related tricks you can do with synths and samples:

Maybe a main synth in the middle, with not much energy above 7kHz, plus two different synths (different plugins/wave forms/filters/tunings/modulation... different NOTES?), panned hard left and right, and EQ'd so they have a sizzling top end? Or at least, side-panned synths that are timbrally distinct from the lead in the middle.

Or, maybe rather than one warm, muted pad, you have 2 different ones, again maybe from totally different synths, EQ'd differently, maybe playing different notes, and panned left and right?

Or, instead of one stereo reverb, how about 2 different mono reverbs (1 plate vs 1 spring?) panned left and right?

Or 2 different ride cymbals (an acoustic ride vs a 909 ride?) playing the same pattern but stereo panned?

Also, based on an answer to a question I asked here a few days ago...

I've been using stereo percussion loops (EG a bar of mixed latin percussion, a live congas loop). But I've been experimenting with making them mono, then panning the mono signals. It feels like... maybe 2 different mono'd samples panned apart, sound more spacious than the same 2 stereo samples similarly panned. I guess because the stereo samples overlap more, whereas the mono samples occupy only a slice of the stereo field?

I went through a phase of working out chord progressions from pop songs. I can play keyboards at a basic level, and I've done a tiny bit of music theory, but at the start I couldn't link that experience to understanding how a song actually works: I couldn't identify chords and keys by ear.

The way I did it went something like this:

First, try to work out the root note of each chord in the track. Often that's quite straightforward... if you can loop the track, keep hitting keys until you find a note that matches the track best. If the bassline's simple, it might just be the note the bassline's playing at any point in time.

Then, your first guess at a matching chord is... a simple major or minor triad in the key of the bass note you just identified. Most often, that'll be close; sometimes maybe the bassline's just moving through a note on its way to the root of a chord; sometimes you might want to try chords that match a 4th above or below the bass note.

You're looking to build up a chord progression that feels at home with the rest of the track.

Then drive it into your memory: practise it, play with transposing it, record it in a DAW, write it down somehow (the I / IV / vi notation style's useful cos it's not specific to a particular key).

You should be able to build up a bank of chord progressions, and if you're lucky you'll start to spot some repeating patterns - you'll start to see what chord progressions are common in your chosen genre.

Um... http://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/common-chord-progressions

Then start taking your chords a little off the beaten track: adding extra 4ths, 7ths, 2nds/9ths... or trying out majors in place of minors and vice versa...