Recording and mixing vocals

Stratavarious

Upload the backing and the vocal track raw without fx to the Google drive.. then people can demo some options,  basic level and EQ adjustments will make a big difference. 

Danny1969

I just had a quick listen on a laptop

Great Hooky song .. defo my cup of tea.

The delivery isn't quite there timing wise, in terms of slotting in ... it's almost there. Timing is everything. I'm talking tiny amounts out but it's these little things that a producer hears, makes you correct and that's how a record ends up sounding like a record and not a demo. I know people might think timing has nothing to do with the mix but it does.

Size comes from contrast.  Sometimes to make a lower sung vocal sound bigger, you need to make the rest sound a little smaller. There's a few tricks I've used to make vocals sound bigger

Double the vocal track ... sometimes quad track it

Add a whisper track, just whisper the vocal along, will sound strange on it's own but it will add a little magic

Add a low vocal, often almost a monotone root note of the vocal. This adds weight to the vocal

Then compress and mix those so you almost can't hear them.

Effects wise a common mistake is to use too much reverb by not using enough. What I mean by that is you generally want a longer length on the verb but less reverb return. That way the vocal thickens up but you doesn't sound like your singing into a toilet. EQ the reverb return

Most of all have fun learning. And keep writing cos that's good IMO

ewal

And the song's not the subject of the thread, but I think it'd work if I produced it more in a college rock "Don't go back to Rockville" style, less shoegaze "Leave them all behind". More Mitch Easter, less Alan Moulder ;-)

ewal

Brilliant @danny1969. That's what I needed to hear.

ewal

Might use this particular song as an exercise in learning various techniques. I will murder it in my head doing this, but I've got lots of other tunes to go back to once I'm clear what I want to achieve and how to get there.

thecolourbox

It's hard to suggest specifically for this track especially if there's already some processing on it, but I'd say like ithers it's a bit quiet in this specific mix - however the way to increase volume doesn't just need to be turning up the slider (though it can be). What I sometimes do is copy and paste the main vocal track a couple times, make the copies quieter and pan them randomly left and right. Then put more "extreme" settings on the processing for these. In the case of the example, I'd have them really trebly, a literal eq shelf blocking the lows, then some reverb on those two. Which I guess would necessitate removing most if not all of the reverb on the main vocal.

But then I know my production styles are not to everybody's taste, they are born out of what I like to hear rather than what is widely established as correct or, as it's sometimes called, "knowing what you're doing"

ewal

I saw a quote recently where John Congleton said something like every production is a case of making up as you go along and not really knowing what you're doing. So maybe that's the right way of going about it! Of course knowing more about what and how things work would improve the strike rate. I'd like to be able to hit instead of miss more often.

thecolourbox

Yes I guess, then it's just practice and reworking stuff that helps then. Self reference, "i'd like something similar to when I did xyz with with a bit more of something else", having the settings saved or written down. Has made my composition and cover challenge entries much quicker to do (hence flooding the playlists sometimes)

ewal

Absolutely. And I guess that's what's behind this thread. I've got quite a few things and years of effort I can fall back on when creating a new tune - just none of them involve vocals...

thecolourbox

Definitely recommend taking part in the cover and composition challenges for this reason alone - in particular the covers one helps me a lot by setting an arbitrary requirement of a song beginning with whatever letter, but because it's not music I necessarily care for as much as if i were composing, i can mess about a bit more without consequence and find more good things to use in my productions for my own songs, if that makes sense. 

For example my current composition entry song contains settings from covers I've done of songs by Linkin Park (drums and synths/organs), Cyndi Lauper (vocals), Keane (clean guitar), Radiohead (driven guitar), Jacob Collier (syncopated percussion), Jeff Buckley (acoustic drums) etc, then just slight tweaking from there. But they took a while to come up with and I probably couldn't recreate them from scratch without the saved presets!

flying_pie

That's better than I was expecting from your critique. And I like the track. We'll look forward to hearing more from you

I was going to page @thecolourbox as you've similar voices but I see he's already dropped by. I'd also agree with @Danny1969 about the delivery (and other multi tracking stuff). But delivery is what matters. A pitch perfect mumbled or hesitant vocal will always fare less well off than more confidently selling the song even if it's not vocally pitch perfect

(Shameless plug) Why not use the cover challenge for some practice? We're about to start U then it will soon be V and I'd love to hear you do Vapour Trail or Unfamiliar....

ewal

The dilemma is as always lack of time... I would love to try out the covers challenge and learn from the experience. But I'm engulfed by the need to finish some of the tunes sitting in my backlog... I won't bore you with the details, but it goes back through several years of projects that were so near, but far experiences...

ewal

Although you've got me thinking... Unfamiliar and Vapour Trail you say ;-)

ewal

And seeing as Ride are being suggested. Here's one of the few songs I've completed with vocals very much inspired by Leave Them All Behind. Not mixed by me though...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ss-IVA8esJg

mike257

ewal said:

Turns out I couldn't find anything I'm not totally embarrassed by, but thought I'd share something anyway. This was a one take recording this evening, no tuning fixes, but an attempt at using a DS'er, EQ, Comp, Radiator plus Delay and Reverb sends. It sounds rubbish. The backing tracks will ultimately get re-recorded too, but the basic issues I have with vocals are all there.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JjkqOXljZW739Q7ARxYqXUdNhfYtfsfo/view?usp=sharing

Not rubbish at all! Really solid arrangement and a great starting point, I like it a lot. 

If you're struggling to make any element in a mix cut through, whether it's vocals or something else, before you look at more gear/more plugins I'd look at arrangement and balance. There has to be a space for things to sit in. Sometimes that means making things sound smaller on their own, to allow everything to sound big when it's all together. 

It's an easy trap to fall in to, particularly in that solo recording environment, because you most likely build a track from the bottom up and if you're thinking about making it all sound big and chunky instrumentally with each new layer you add, by the time you come to add vocals, the sonic spectrum is pretty heavily packed and there's not a natural space for them to sit. It's worth going back across your guitar layers with a critical eye (think as a producer, not as a guitarist) and honestly ask if there's anything you'd cut out or reduce in each section of the song to allow more space for your vocal to exist in. This alone can be huge in terms of clarity and dynamics. 

Other people have mentioned automation too. I'm predominantly a live mixer, I don't do a ton of studio work these days, but my live mixes are very rarely static. I'll make constant small and subtle fader moves to push and pull different elements of the mix to make space for whatever needs to punch through at that time, and you can use fader automation in your DAW in the same way. Just a slight pull back on other midrange-heavy elements whenever the vocals are in can help. 

Another thing I'll often do live but can also translate to a studio setting is to bus instruments together and use dynamic EQ or a multiband compressor across the bus keyed from my vocals, and dialled in to affect the vocal clarity range, so that whenever the vocal is active, that important frequency range is subtly dipped down by a couple of dB on the instrument groups. If it's dialled in right, the effect on the instruments is imperceptible but it just helps carve that little space out for the voice to poke through. I'll often have this dialled anywhere from 1kHz to 2.5kHz, but it depends on the context and the vocal. 

Too much verb/delay can also push a vocal too far in to the background, but if you want that big reverby vocal sound without losing clarity, a ducker on the effects return, keyed from the vocal, pulling the return down by a few dB while the vocal is active but quickly releasing and bringing the tail back up when the voice stops can help maintain some clarity while still getting the ambience of the big tails/repeats in the mix. Again, this should be set subtly so it's not a big obvious pull, but just enough to clean up the vocal sound and make it pop out a little more. 

ewal

Great advice - thanks. I was working on this track again yesterday - will definitely try out a few things when I get to the mixing stage.

flying_pie

Have we mentioned sidechain compression on the guitars triggered by the vocals? That's a useful way of helping the vocal cut through in a guitar-centric mix

Essentially it achieves the same as fader automation that @mike257 was taking about

mike257

flying_pie said:

Have we mentioned sidechain compression on the guitars triggered by the vocals? That's a useful way of helping the vocal cut through in a guitar-centric mix

Essentially it achieves the same as fader automation that @mike257 was taking about

Yeah, I mentioned using a multiband compressor or dynamic EQ across instruments side chained to the vocals. That way you can make it a bit more frequency specific and just subtly pull back the areas that mask the vocal instead of dipping everything across the full frequency spectrum. Means you can be a little more surgical with it.

rze99

Kind of basic stuff, but

i make sure I get multiple takes and keep all the good ones

write notes as I go about which sections were the best. 

really important to get all the takes done on one occasion with the best sound you can get for the singer, note the best sound for the singer in the mix in his or her ears.

I use physical outboard gear from focusrite
to compress and EQ a bit at the input stage - again makes it better straight away for the singer to hear that in their ears them sounding good straight away to get them into the vibe. you are never gonna get the best vocal performance if it doesn’t sound great in their ears. once they get cooking with the right mix you can usually get most of it done in a couple of hours.

I also separately export the vocal tracks and clean them up manually and  raise and lower volume a touch wherever required based on what the singer has done. 

it’s usually a good tip right at the outset to get rid of all the bottom end with cut - this is at least a good tip for rock and Alt to keep the vocals in the right range to not get confused with Bass and kick drum areas. 

I also like to do an export of the completed finished vocal onto a separate track and run that through Guitar amp or other tape distortion aims and compress the fuck out of those. it’s great to have that available as a mix in edge/trash track. 

flying_pie

mike257 said:

flying_pie said:

Have we mentioned sidechain compression on the guitars triggered by the vocals? That's a useful way of helping the vocal cut through in a guitar-centric mix

Essentially it achieves the same as fader automation that @mike257 was taking about

Yeah, I mentioned using a multiband compressor or dynamic EQ across instruments side chained to the vocals. That way you can make it a bit more frequency specific and just subtly pull back the areas that mask the vocal instead of dipping everything across the full frequency spectrum. Means you can be a little more surgical with it.

Thanks @mike257 ;

I'll need to try that. To date I've just used simple compression on guitar/bass to help vocals(kick come through but multiband or dynamic EQ does indeed sound more surgical. I just need to read up on the surgical techniques instead of taking a chainsaw to things...