apyssjw you’re absolutely right about the hats in this case though. i look at the singles i release more as exercises than anything else at this stage. i just try new things, sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. i really love the overall mix and sound with this record, but there’s still a million things that could be better.
i use utility more than any other plugin. i like the bass mono feature, sometimes i’ll mono the base then widen above the cutoff and i use it to narrow things like you mentioned … not quite mono, but definitely more centered. the tool i find really useful for placing sounds is dearvr music (https://www.plugin-alliance.com/en/products/dearvr_music.html). It allows you to place a sound on the x,y, and z axis and it works great for moving things around in space really accurately. sounds really amazing on headphones.
i think my problem now is that i’m in the process of completely changing my workflow and approach to both mixing and arranging. usually these frustrating periods are followed by a breakthrough for me, so that’s probably a good thing, but i feel like i really don’t know what i’m doing at the moment. i started an experiment the other day that seems like it might have some promise, which is writing in mono. it forces me to be more specific with the sounds that i use because there’s less space and when you open it up to stereo, it sounds really good. that and taking time to really learn compression should help, i hope.
