Thank you! I had two very seperate ideas for that song in the pre-production: one idea was to make the song more like K'NAAN - Wavin' Flag or Baltimora Tarzan Boy, but on the other hand I wanted to try out this Pop Rock thing as well. I played around with both ideas and later decided to finish them both. In mixing I start my mixing with choosing the right notes, then I find perfect sounds for those notes and only after that I move the faders and apply EQ and compression. I try not to use effects to craft the sound. If you have to put 5-6 effects on the inserts/sends for a channel, then the initial preset is not right to start with. I also produce with nothing on the master channel. This forces me to make the mix sound as good as possible before mastering.