OK, OK…finally we get to the fun part! If you’ve read Part I and Part II of Mixing Your Vocals, you’ll know that laying the musical foundation – a great mix on the instrumental tracks – will give you a ‘frame’ for your vocal track. The instrumentals need to enhance, showcase, support your vocal instrument, not distract or cover.
By the way, everything I’m describing in these posts occurs using ProTools recording/editing/mixing software. It’s the industry standard and it’s all I have ever used for my released projects. It works for me.
Start with a completely dry vocal track, that is, a track with no reverb or effects. As I stated in Part I, a good mic and a great room or recording booth will give you a clean, organic vocal slate to begin with.
Another note keep in mind: when I discuss vocal mixing, I am discussing projects where the vocal is the main or focus instrument. If you are a rock singer who screams your lyrics and whose goal is the loud, raucous vocal performance of a rock singer, by all means you can skip the next few paragraphs! If grungy is your thing, go for it, honey…for my purposes here I am discussing how to get the cleanest, finest sounds out of your voice. Jazz singers, classical, singer/songwriters, indie pop singers, even spoken word projects can benefit from the techniques I describe in this series.
Depending upon where your voice lives within a vocal range (do you have a high voice, low voice, somewhere in the middle?), the engineer can begin listening to the track and identifying vocal pops, very loud breaths, or other mouth noises that become very LOUD all of a sudden when you start really listening. In ProTools, the volume of the breaths can be lowered, and pops and lip smacks can be edited out. If your engineer can’t or won’t do this basic clean-up and maintenance, get another engineer!
Once noises and distractions are removed, listen again to the entire track to identify any notes that are either too loud, too soft, or….out of tune. I will discuss “Fixing Out of Tune Vocals in ProTools” in another post. Suffice to say: I don’t do it, don’t recommend it, and don’t like it!!
Anyway, if there are vocal lines that are too loud, too soft, a word here or there that bother you volume-wise, have the engineer adjust those notes, too…just the volume.
“De-ssss’ing” your vocal track should also be done; listen for loud “S” sounds; in ProTools there are combinations of ways – manually or automated – that will fix those; I always prefer that the engineer do them one at a time, manually. You’re making ART here….hands on is best, IMHP!
Compression – this is tricky – I defer to the engineer here, in terms of settings for compression. I prefer my high notes to really ring – almost to the point of too much – then I pull back. There is a balance to be found between notes that are too ‘ringy’ or too compressed. I have him set compression and then I listen for it in the final mix versions. And I always come back and ask for less compression. It depends upon the sound and quality of your notes, and the sound you ultimately want for your vocal when all is done.
EQ is another factor, and can be accomplished with automation – for the entire song’s overall EQ, or, manually applied to just one part or several spot sections of the song. Again, this depends upon your vocal range and the final quality you are after. Do you want a really ‘hot’ vocal with lots of high end? or a more smooth, homogeneous or mellow overall sound? I like a nice balance, because my voice has a lot of high end in it already.
Now we get to what I call “Ear Candy,” or: Reverb. Trends seem to come and go with the use of reverb on recordings. And of course, different genres use tons of reverb to great effect – rock, pop, techno and lots of the old 80′s vocal music (which I love). In my opinion, for vocal projects where you want to highlight the quality, tone and lyrics of the voice, like jazz, classical, folk, etc., too much reverb is a distraction, and it covers up the inherent, organic qualities that make that voice unique. This is simply MY opinion for my own projects. But singers need to turn down that reverb knob – otherwise you are undoing all the hard work and attention you’ve given to this project. Don’t lay a thick coating of reverb on top of your masterpiece! Think of it this way – when you listen to your music 10 years from now, will it still sound classic, or rather, timeless and trendless? Will it stand the test of time? Or will it sound outdated? Will you hear your VOICE, or will you hear REVERB?
When you play back a track with lots of reverb, the first inclination for beginners is to say: “Wow! I love it” because it DOES sound kind of cool. But again – is it right for your voice? your project? the genre? What you’re hearing, with lots of reverb, is the “ear candy.” Not your voice. Better to have not enough reverb than too much. Again, my opinion!
Once all of the above has been accomplished, it’s time to get a vocal mix to listen to, critique, and then communicate your edits and changes to the engineer.
In the next post, I will address “Listening to Your Vocal Mix for Editing.”
