How to Make Your Chorus Bigger

When you are a mixing or producing a song, you want there to be some dynamics. This means that you want there to be dynamic differences between verses, choruses, bridges, and so forth. If you don't have any dynamic change, say when you get to the chorus, then your song will sound  flat and have no parts that stand out.

Today I'm going to talk about two things that will help you have a bigger chorus in your songs.

Tip One:

Automate Panning

Automating panning is a nifty little technique to widen up your choruses. Basically, the idea is that you have your panning automated to widen or narrow at particular parts of the song. Since we are trying to make a bigger chorus, we want to widen the sound when we hit the chorus. You can do this to multiple instruments but I recommend drums or guitars. Try having the drums panned in the center during the verses, and then have them pan hard left and right when it hits the chorus. This will help to widen your chorus and make it sound much bigger. You could also do this to acoustic guitars. If you doubled acoustic guitars, just have one play in the center during the verses, then bring both in panned left and right on the chorus.

Tip Two:

Record Dynamically

This tip is all about getting it right at the source. When a song is being performed and recorded, make sure the parts are dynamically written and then recorded that way. Have the guitarist hang back during the verse and let the drums and bass carry it. Then when you hit the chorus, open it up with all the instruments. This is basic songwriting dynamics, but if you don't have this right, it's going to be a lot harder to make your song dynamic in the mixing process.

These are just two tips to hopefully help you make a better dynamic mix. As always, don't be afraid to get creative with it! Try things and remember to break the rules every once in a while.

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