It’s always interesting to see the answers to questions like this…
What do you personally do to create or add excitement to a mix?
Discuss
I think it starts with the arrangement/production. Making sure there is dynamic changes and that it’s not one boring riff repeated all over. Have a flow that goes from low to high and vice versa. When you have that, 90% of the excitement is there already.
You can always add some cool ear candies to transitions (reverse cymbals, transitions sounds, delay throws), then change the sound from one section to the next.
You can also make sure you keep some headroom for the last chorus, where you might want to push the whole thing +1db.
There’s lots of little things like that that can add to the excitement, but if you start with a boring song and a boring arrangement, none of these things will do much good.
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Dynamics are a big deal to me too.
I had a buddy that claimed that the magic was found in the hi-hat. Now, I’m not so sure that it’s one particular thing like he did, but I find it interesting that we all have our different places for finding excitement in a mix. For some, it’s found in the highs, others the lows. I’d love to see what others have to say also.
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I use delays a lot to generate excitement… Sound tends to bounce off distant surfaces when it gets loud, so delays can psychoacoustically suggest heightened volume.
Distortion/saturation is another great tactic - making something sound like its about to explode always adds tension and excitement.
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He’s not wrong.
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‘excitement in a mix’ is a big deal for me… funny, the word that came to mind for me was ‘authenticity’… that is an ingredient/component/whatever that hooks me in to music of all genres. Now I’m trying to drill down and figure out what it is… an elusive quality for sure. A musical truth? A flow? A place where the music becomes more than a sum of its parts… I’m waffling but for me it’s quite a philosophical question.
I do also like adding strange noises to surprise listeners from time to time… 
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This is probably my biggest challenge. Getting an ordinary song to be something enough above ordinary so that it will appeal to listeners… hope to learn these next-level techniques.
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Adding more or possibly taking things away on repeated sections. Add something new to a second chorus or verse that makes different from the first time, such as harmonies, or a new instrument or riff.
Also doubling instruments. I’m currently working on an album that I doubled tracked vocals, vocal harmonies, and guitar, and I’m loving the way it sounds.
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I’d love to hear the results! And I agree that the adding and subtracting instruments/vocals helps. Does wonders with the dynamics of the song too!
The song should do that for you. If the song has enough “grab”, the arrangement will follow.
If it takes excess work to do it, it will sound fake and won’t work.
That’s why you should always experience “yesssssssss” moments when recording/engineering.
They translate into excitement for the listener.
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Gosh I haven’t double tracked for a long time… a tricky process to do well… hmmm, now I guess I cheat with parallel compression and tricksy cubase variaudio fun…
It’s all about the song for me - it’ll tell you what it needs if you listen to the arrangement and understand the intent of the artist. Sometimes you need to understand the intent of the artist DESPITE the recording you’re having to mix, and things need helping along. Excitement to me is often about defying expectations and playing with how balanced or unbalanced the mix is - in terms of stereo spread, frequency response, volume balance between the tracks. Sometimes it’s exciting to push something too far, or not fix something that annoys you.
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+1 to cool transitions & such, especially for electronic music, I love some of what Paper Crows does to make things exciting. Without cool transitions and ear candy I find electronic music can easily feel lifeless, but cool touches make it as emotionally impactful as musicians play real instruments would.
If I am given the tracks from others to mix, I tend to avoid including any other sound that was not in the first intension of the producer. Am I right ? So some ways to create this excitement are the old trick of widening up during the chorus and/or rising one or two dB the Drums for example.
One thing I have to constantly remind myself while writing is to not get stuck on the grid. My current workflow is to create the song, then send a good rough idea of it to my drummer friend, who then syncopates and accents it. It’s dangerous when you play to a click or a loop during the initial stages to worry too much about where things are lining up. Sometimes you need starts and stops and dynamic changes that you overlook trying to be accurate to whatever you are using to keep time. It was a lot easier to give a tape to a drummer and a bassist, and then adjust to the groove they came up with, which would have flourishes and turnarounds that I now try to get after my poor drummer has learned the tune in isolation.
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I would Love to hear more about the practical application of this. Can you tell us how you do this?
Sure, no problem…Probably the best way to explain it is by way of demonstration:
Here is the lead vocal transition from the verse, through the turnaround/hook and into the chorus of @StylesBitchley latest track that I mixed: “Mean Girl”
As you can hear, the LV has a few layers of delay and ambience on it during the verse, as well as some varying delay throws for interest, but when the chorus kicks in @ 35-36 seconds, I whack up the send level on a ping pong delay - its set to eighth notes, it’s pretty narrow across the stereo field, and it’s quite dark - high and low passed fairly savagely to just really sit it behind the vocals and not draw too much attention to itself.
A similar idea, but different execution with the harmonies:
This is where I really go to town in the chorus - automating a delay throw at the end of each phrase. It’s quarter note stereo delay, with the right channel 10ms later than the left channel, panned out wide, with a fairly high feedback. I also compressed the delay to bring out the decay of the repeats
Here is the complete track if you’re interested in listening to the overall effect:
http://indierecordingdepot.com/t/mean-girl-watch-it-she-might-bash-you/1164
So…yeah, just those sort of tactics are what I’m talking about… I hope that explains it well enough.
Thanks Andrew. That is a great explaination. I do a similar thing with delay throws. I always looked at it like I was smoothing the voice into the track😊
My take on this is just another variation of the above.
I start with ROOM or ANBIENT mics (could be 2ft or 12ft from the source) then stack a reverb (maybe even two) on that to make it bigger but ADD PRE-DELAYs to them, to not kill the room or ambient tone/s previously added… then add any time ddelays to that (depending on the source).
SO excitement is a Combination of room mics / ambient reverb/ room reverbs and prob plate reverbs and then delays.
But these are NOT just stacked DIRECTLY on top of each other, they are Timed with predelays and Blended almost in series (not parallel) but thats not an exact science either 
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