jc-muscleshoals wrote on Wed, 31 March 2010 14:34 |
I mixed a song for a client to the best of my ability and he was happy with it, but an engineer friend was in town and wanted to take a stab at it. His specialty is mixing, where mine is more recording. (I've been trying to learn to mix better so I can offer both services.) The levels were pretty much the same as what I'd done, but when the vocals came in, Oh Wow-there was the difference! I closed my eye and the vocal was sitting right in front of my face between me and the monitors. How is this achieved? If this is part of the art that I just need to learn on my own, I can appreciate that and I'm trying. But if this is some easy, well known part of the task that I just haven't been taught, then I'm all ears-please someone teach me.
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Hard work! Most probably, anyway- as the vox are (usually) the most important single element of the mix, you need to dedicate an appropriate amount of time to them. As Grant says- heavy compression and limiting will get you some of the way there. It needs to be applied in the right way though, often guys duplicate the vocal channel and put different amounts/varieties of compression on each and blend them. ITB I always liked Waves Rcomp for vocals- often I found high ratios with a medium attack/fast release worked well for getting things upfront. Judicious amounts of hi boost on a decent eq will also make stuff 'pop' more. Sometimes boosting an EQ feeding into a compressor can be a vibe- helps to smooth out the spikiness that the eq adds.
The downside to heavy eq and compression is that a vocal becomes a more labour intensive business- chances are you'll need to ride breaths, mouth sounds and other fricative artefacts down a bit- either pre or post compression- to stop them from distracting from the track. Sibilance is another thing- sometimes a set and forget plugin can work, but often you'll need to get in there and manually automate stuff down, or automate eqs to duck down the problem freqs.
You'll need to ride the vocal level overall throughout the track as well, to keep it sitting there without ever sticking out too much or stepping on anything else. Try and listen quietly when you ride it, and make sure it's always audible, obviously! It can get really detailed (doesn't have to, but it can!)- riding the sustain of notes, accentuating attacks on certain words, automating around pitchy spots in a flattering manner etc...
You need to choose effects in a complimentary way too- short reverbs, subtle slapback or tempo-synced delays and pitchblender/chorus type effects let you put a vocal louder than you'd otherwise get away with by smoothing out the edges and putting a bit of space around the voice, but they shouldn't be massively audible in the context of the overall mix.
Often it can help to get a vocal sound up very early on in the mix, and then feed in the other instruments into the space around the vocal, rather than the other way around.
Hope some of that helps!
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