Sitting the vocals in the mix.

[No name]

I wanted to get some tips on this. I have a few tracks i'm working on currently, and I notice that even though I turn the volume to vocals down quite considerably, they still just "sit on top" of the mix, rather than blending in. I use reverb sparingly on most of the music I do, as most people i've worked with are in to hip hop and so it is never an option to drown the vocals in reverb. I did try and cut the low end (100hz on down) but it just still sits on top of the mix, not really blending in like it should. Is there any other things I should try, particularly using EQ to shape the sound in to the mix?

[mike@manike]

Delay is a great way to help vocals sit in a mix.

Often I'll use two.

One delay triggering every beat or every other beat of the bar and also a really short stereo delay (25ms left and 35ms right say). Using a short delay like that as a send can really beef up a vocal but can introduce phase problems so you should play around with the times.

Compression helps too. I use two again. One as a general rms compression and one more as a peak limiter.

Double track vocals can help. ie recording the vocalist twice and panning left and right.

They're just ideas to try.

You could try compressing ur vocal reverb too. Means you can hear the reverb more without having to crank the sound up. You could add some eq to it too.

Mike

[adj]

First, you need to leave somewhat of a 'space' for your vocals in the mix -- frequency varies with the type of voice, whether you have backup harmonies, etc. Get to know and then accommodate your v-freq with a good EQ.

Position, as in where the vocal sits 'spacially'. Some delays coupled with a good plate or room impulse response reverb can do wonders.

Pan and widen -- try using a stereo imaging plugin like Waves S1 Imager and tweak until you hear the vocals blend and sit properly within the whole mix.

Lastly, compression. Waves RVox is great for most vocals.

[music-tech]

Expanding on what adj said about space in your mix for the vocals. There are several components of this:

First is the song arrangement itself and making sure that there aren't other instruments fighting for the same space in the arrangement as the vocals. That means no really busy or melodic instrument parts that occupy the same frequency range as the vocals playing at the same time as the vocals. Good musicians, and especially jazz musicians, know how to play around each other and give each other space to do their thing, laying out as necessary to make room for whatever the key instrument (or vocal) is at any point in the song. If you've got a busy arrangement with too much happening at the same time, then drop some things out to make more room for the vocals.

Second, is carving out some space in the other instruments for the vocals to pop through without having to make the vocals louder than everything else. For example, if you were doing rock music with a lot of heavy rhythm guitars happening during the mix, you might need to cut some frequencies from the guitars in the vocal range (anywhere from around 700Hz to 2000 or 3000 Hz depending on the vocalist) to allow the vocals to poke out in those frequencies. Think of it as making a hole in the frequency spectrum for the vocals to pop through, the same way as you would filter out the low end from synths and guitars to make more room for the bass and kick drum.

Third thing would be to compare your mixes to some modern CDs for the relative balance of instruments and vocals. I think you'll find that, in general, the kick drum, snare, bass, and vocals are all pretty loud and roughly on the same level is most modern pop/rock, RnB, and Hip-Hop music, as those are usually the most important elements, and then everything else is mixed quite a bit further in the background, especially during verses. And many times, especially in urban/RnB type music, there is almost nothing else happening during the verses besides the drums, bass, and vocals... maybe one or two other instruments doing very sparse rhythms mixed way in the background.

The final thing I'll offer is that once your mix is mastered, the extra compression and peak limiting used in that stage will bring out the other instruments more and make the vocal sit down in the mix a bit more.

My tendency was to always want to put the vocals back in the mix more since I'm more of a musician than a vocalist, but then when comparing to modern releases, my vocals were always too far back. Take a critical listen to modern music and you'll find the vocals really are quite loud and up front in most modern styles.

Steve

[Kim Lajoie]

Just to add another cook to the kitchen, try this:

First, we start with the meat.

If your mix sounds balanced and "finished" without the vocals, you need to start again.

Step one: Start with the vocals. Mute everything else. EQ and lightly compress the vocals until you're happy with their sound on their own. Reference some vocal-dominant music. Depending on your mic and voice, hipass anywhere from 100hz to 250hz. Reduce the low mids around 500Hz (wide, though!) by 6-12db. It will sound thin on its own - this will save you when you add the other instruments. The amount of thinness you give the vocal is based only on your judgement. You'll get it wrong the first few times, but you'll get better with practice.

Step two: Add the snare drum. Nothing else, you should only be hearing the snare drum and the vocal. Work the snare (sound choice, eq, compression, just the usual) until you LOVE the sound. Don't be lazy - keep working until you can honestly say to yourself "This is THE snare drum for this song. This is IT.". Set the level of the snare so that it sounds roughly the same level as the vocal. Again, this is based on your judgement, and you will get it wrong the first time. Keep going. Use your ears. You are only defeated if you fail to understand WHY it's wrong.

Step three: Add the bass and the kick. Entire forests have been felled on this subject alone. I have my methods, and you will need to find your own. How you approach bass and kick greatly depends on your taste, and your style of music. When you've got them ready, set the level so they're present, but just a notch behind the vocal and snare. You are not mixing in a club. You are not mixing in your mate's hot car. You are mixing in a studio, and the vocal and snare have to be in front of everything else. That's why you start with them - because it's ALL about the vocal and snare.

Step four: Add the other instruments. Now that you've got the vocal, snare, bass, and kick (the meat) locked, you can start adding the vegetables. Keyboards, pads, guitars, hats, percussion, vocoders, background vocals. Don't make them huge. Don't listen to them. Always listen to the vocal and the snare. Set the level of these other instruments to minimum (where you can't hear them), and bring them in one by one. Raise the level until you can hear it, but avoid bringing them near the level of the vocal and snare. You'll probably need to hipass these other instruments. Be brutal. Remember - it's all about the vocal and the snare.

Ok, now you've got your mix, time to add the spices.

First: Panning. You've got all your tracks panned centre right now, don't you? If not, go back and pan them all centre. Once you've fixed your mix so it sounds great in MONO, pan your tracks one by one. The meat (vocal, snare, kick, and bass) stays center. Everything else gets panned all over the place. Be crazy. Keep it mostly balanced (equal loudness on both sides), but don't sweat it. The meat keeps it grounded.

Next, add subte saturation to everything except lead vocals. I don't want to write too much about it here, so I'll keep it brief. Saturation will add some hair and "realism" to the overly clean sound of your mix. For each instrument, add a tiny bit of fuzz until you think it's too much. Stop there - it'll all gel in the mix and tomorrow you'll hardly hear it. Try to use a tool that doesn't add much compression. Remember - you're not changing the sound, you're just adding to it.

Lastly, add reverb. If you've already got any reverb anywhere in your mix, remove it (unless it's a special effect). Add the best hall reverb you have to a send bus, and mute everything except the lead vocal. Add reverb to the vocal, and tweak the advanced parameters to get it to sit right. Sometimes the "Rich Vocal Hall" preset will be perfect, sometimes you'll tweak for half an hour. Don't be lazy. Keep going until you can honestly tell yourself "That's the sound". Read the manual if you have to. Now, set the level of the reverb for the vocal so that it's generous, but not overpowering. Next add a slight amount of reverb to each instrument. Again, remember that you're adding to the sound, not changing it. Give each instrument some depth and space, but don't (for example) transform "guitar" into "reverbed guitar". A TINY amount of reverb on kick and bass will keep them from popping out of the mix.

Congratulations, your mix is complete!

Next week, mastering.

-Kim.

[No name]

Very enlightening, i've just tried your EQ tips on my vocals, and they already make them sit in a bit better. The main problem I had was that the vocal is just too loud and present, hi-passing a little more than I did before helped a great deal, and while it seems subtle to me, the 500hz dip helped too. I want to get the rest of this track down, but when I do i'm going to use your examples as mixing starting points.

I also read something interesting, and wanted to see if anyone else does this. Does anyone bring a commercially recorded song into their host and set it down within your project, and use it as a reference track to your song? I'm going to do this, but I wondered if this actually ever helped anyone more than it harmed (or just got in the way I should say).

[Kim Lajoie]

Very enlightening, i've just tried your EQ tips on my vocals, and they already make them sit in a bit better. The main problem I had was that the vocal is just too loud and present, hi-passing a little more than I did before helped a great deal, and while it seems subtle to me, the 500hz dip helped too. I want to get the rest of this track down, but when I do i'm going to use your examples as mixing starting points.

Thanks.

I also read something interesting, and wanted to see if anyone else does this. Does anyone bring a commercially recorded song into their host and set it down within your project, and use it as a reference track to your song? I'm going to do this, but I wondered if this actually ever helped anyone more than it harmed (or just got in the way I should say).

In my experience, doing this while mixing (or even composing!) will result in a lot of wasted time chasing your tail. Better to start a mixing session by listening to some reference tracks, but putting them away once you start work on your own music. Better to know your speakers and get the mix balance working well within itself. On the other hand, make sure you reference at least two appropriate commercial tracks (from different albums!) while mastering. Uh, next week...

-Kim.

[Kim Lajoie]

Another thing: if you're doing hip hop, you'll want to keep the reverb pretty short, and pretty subtle. Use it to add "size", rather than "depth and space".

-Kim.

[music-tech]

I also read something interesting, and wanted to see if anyone else does this. Does anyone bring a commercially recorded song into their host and set it down within your project, and use it as a reference track to your song? I'm going to do this, but I wondered if this actually ever helped anyone more than it harmed (or just got in the way I should say).

It's always a good idea to reference your mixes to commercial releases of a similar style and instrumentation when you are mixing. As Kim says, I wouldn't do it while composing/tracking, but I disagree that you should only do it once before you start mixing and then not refer back to it. The longer you mix, the more fatigued your ears get and you start making things brighter and changing the balance of things to compensate. You need to reference known good mixes to check yourself on a regular basis to make sure you aren't getting too far away from a good balance or making things too bright. Plus, take ear breaks every hour or two for at least 10 minutes, and spend most of your time mixing at lower volumes.

The only thing to watch out for when referencing your mixes to commercial releases is that they will have already been mastering much louder, and usually brighter, than you'll be able to do while mixing, so you'll need to turn down your CD reference level to match your mixing level so that you aren't thrown off by the huge volume difference.

Kim's other long post was very good as well, with lot's of great advice. But, just remember, there is no one right or wrong way to do anything... you need to find your own method that works for you. Try out some of these suggestions and see which ones you like and which ones you don't. Many of the top professional mixing engineers start building a mix from the "foundations" of drums and bass, while others work from the top down, starting with the vocals. Many hit records have been mixed with either approach... neither one is right or wrong.

Also, Kim's tip about pulling some 500 Hz works on a lot more than just vocals. That range gets crowded very fast, especially in busy mixes, and you can pull some of that from many different tracks. I typically wouldn't pull that much of it from the vocals, but it really all depends on the vocalist and the microphone you used to record the vocals with. It's always best to have lots of microphones to choose from and pick the best one for the vocalist that already has the sound you want so you do as little EQ as possible... but, I usually end up rolling off the low-end from vocals anyway (around 100Hz on down), and sometimes adding some extra air (above 12Khz), and then I will cut around 500 Hz as needed in dense mixes if things are getting too crowded and I can't get the vocals to cut the way I need them to.

Steve

[No name]

Another thing: if you're doing hip hop, you'll want to keep the reverb pretty short, and pretty subtle. Use it to add "size", rather than "depth and space".

-Kim.

I know, ever since i've began doing music it is mainly been in hip hop (except for the past year or so where i'm branching out, but that brings me a whole new set of problems getting used to how different style of music are mixed differently) I never hardly touch the reverb, i'll put a nice short little tale and that is it, and sometimes a nice (but subtle) ping pong delay suits it well too. I like it to sit in the mix to where you can't hear it, but if it was gone you would notice it.

[No name]

I also read something interesting, and wanted to see if anyone else does this. Does anyone bring a commercially recorded song into their host and set it down within your project, and use it as a reference track to your song? I'm going to do this, but I wondered if this actually ever helped anyone more than it harmed (or just got in the way I should say).

It's always a good idea to reference your mixes to commercial releases of a similar style and instrumentation when you are mixing. As Kim says, I wouldn't do it while composing/tracking, but I disagree that you should only do it once before you start mixing and then not refer back to it. The longer you mix, the more fatigued your ears get and you start making things brighter and changing the balance of things to compensate. You need to reference known good mixes to check yourself on a regular basis to make sure you aren't getting too far away from a good balance or making things too bright. Plus, take ear breaks every hour or two for at least 10 minutes, and spend most of your time mixing at lower volumes.

The only thing to watch out for when referencing your mixes to commercial releases is that they will have already been mastering much louder, and usually brighter, than you'll be able to do while mixing, so you'll need to turn down your CD reference level to match your mixing level so that you aren't thrown off by the huge volume difference.

Kim's other long post was very good as well, with lot's of great advice. But, just remember, there is no one right or wrong way to do anything... you need to find your own method that works for you. Try out some of these suggestions and see which ones you like and which ones you don't. Many of the top professional mixing engineers start building a mix from the "foundations" of drums and bass, while others work from the top down, starting with the vocals. Many hit records have been mixed with either approach... neither one is right or wrong.

Also, Kim's tip about pulling some 500 Hz works on a lot more than just vocals. That range gets crowded very fast, especially in busy mixes, and you can pull some of that from many different tracks. I typically wouldn't pull that much of it from the vocals, but it really all depends on the vocalist and the microphone you used to record the vocals with. It's always best to have lots of microphones to choose from and pick the best one for the vocalist that already has the sound you want so you do as little EQ as possible... but, I usually end up rolling off the low-end from vocals anyway (around 100Hz on down), and sometimes adding some extra air (above 12Khz), and then I will cut around 500 Hz as needed in dense mixes if things are getting too crowded and I can't get the vocals to cut the way I need them to.

Steve

Very helpful info. I suppose maybe my mic could be a small part of the problem (small being the key word here) as it is a pretty cheap mic. Microphones are actually the next thing I plan to buy, I wanted to get my hands on the SM58 mainly because it is such a tried and true microphone with what i'm told good quality. I'm also planning to look into buying a condenser mic, as i'm interested in the higher freq range the condensers are usually capable of picking up. I'm not sure which one yet though as I haven't really looked in to it.

Would you guys like to hear some snippets of the song in question? Perhaps it would help?

[music-tech]

Very helpful info. I suppose maybe my mic could be a small part of the problem (small being the key word here) as it is a pretty cheap mic. Microphones are actually the next thing I plan to buy, I wanted to get my hands on the SM58 mainly because it is such a tried and true microphone with what i'm told good quality. I'm also planning to look into buying a condenser mic, as i'm interested in the higher freq range the condensers are usually capable of picking up. I'm not sure which one yet though as I haven't really looked in to it.

Would you guys like to hear some snippets of the song in question? Perhaps it would help?

The microphone is definitely a major part of the vocal sound. A good microphone that is well matched with the voice you are recording, plus a high quality microphone pre-amp can make a big difference. The microphone is more important than the pre-amp, but even a great microphone through a really cheap pre-amp isn't going to sound very good.

You won't find many hit records that have been recorded with an SM-58, although they are definitely somewhat of a standard for liver performance. But, there have been hit records where the artist has recorded the vocals with an SM-58 or SM-57 just because they were more comfortable with a handheld microphone, like they use live, or because they were going for that type of sound.

The majority of hit record vocals are usually recorded with fairly expensive condenser microphones. However, the most expensive is not always the best. You really have to try a few out and find what works well for the voice you are recording. If you are only doing your own music and you are the only singer, then your job is easier since you just need to rent or borrow a few microphones until you find one that gives you the sound you are looking for with your voice.

There is no doubt, though, that every studio should own at least one Shure SM57, which is almost the same as the SM-58 but without the integrated wind screen. The SM57 is the long time studio "standard" for things like snare drums and guitar cabinets, and can certainly be used as a vocal microphone in a pinch (although you'll need some kind of pop filter since it doesn't have one built-in and is prone to popping if you work it close). However, it would not be my first choice as my only vocal microphone (nor would the SM58).

You don't need to spend $5000 or more on a Sony C800 or vintage Neumann U47 tube microphone either. There are plenty of great new microphones in the $300 to $2000 price range to be had out there... it all depends on your budget and the voice you are going to be recording (and the style of music). For example, check out some of the 40 series microphones from Audio Technica (4033, 4047, 4050, 4060) or something like a Soundelux U195, or one of the Peluso microphones... all good choices for large diaphragm condensers. For a bit tighter budget, something like the Shure SM7 (not the SM57) might work for your voice. It's a dynamic microphone that you'll see at a lot of radio stations, but also has a great sound that is better many times than some of the lower end condenser microphones. I've seen people like Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam use them, as well as many others. Another great, and versatile, dynamic microphone to check out is the Sennheiser MD-421, which can be used for vocals, brass, toms, percussion, kick drum, guitar cabinets, and other applications. It's really great for screamer type vocals, but works fine for other vocals as well. With dynamics, you just won't get as much "air" as you would from a condenser and will just have to do a bit more EQ to get a brighter, more present sound in the mix.

Try to rent or borrow some microphones in your budget range and try them out. Or, rent some time at a major studio with a large collection of microphones and record some vocals for some of your songs there, trying different microphones until you find a great match for your voice, and then buy that one when you can afford it.

Feel free to post an example of your music with the vocals, and maybe I can make some better starting point suggestions for microphones to look at that might suit your voice and style of music.

Steve

[BertKoor]

My vocals never sat right in the mix, until I added compression to it...

[No name]

I do add compression. I must admit though that I usually use classic compresser, and even then I just use presets (if there was one effect I could never really get, it was compression). Maybe I need to give voxformer a try, I hear great things about it and the other voxengo plugs i've tried are really good.

I wouldn't mind spending about 200 or 300 dollars on a mic, so long as it is durable and of a good quality. Right now my pre-amp are the pre-amps in my yamaha mixer which are excellent. I got some old dynamic radio shack mic.

Getting "air" was also another reason i'd like to get my hands on a condenser. I'm going to do some researching tonight and see which mics are out there.

As for an audio example, i'll post one in a few hours.

[No name]

Ok, here is what we are piecing together so far. This "client" (hate that word) is doing hip hop, and so far we have gotten what you hear in the following snippet down. I've applied Compression (may be a bit too much, I know I can hear the compression and I don't care for it much) at about -20db with a ratio of around 2:1. I've hi-passed the vocals at around 200hz, and EQ'ed (Electric-Q free edition) them by giving it a peak of about about -2db at around 500hz, and i'm thinking of adding a bit for presence too. It has a simple ping pong delay (classic delay) and a very short and subtle reverb (Ambience). Hopefully he will have the rest of the track written this week, and i'll get off my lazy ass and finish the composition, but it's mainly the vocals that are a priority to me at this point. I'm trying to set up a good FZ chain as a send for the vocals, and i'd like to get that out the way. I know I shouldn't even bother until I get the musical side of it complete, but i'm stubborn.

Oh yes, and I forgot to mention that I did use dfx monomaker as I accidentally recorded the vocals and stereo and wanted to break it down to mono (how unprofessional and time consuming of me ), but we'll most likely be recording the vocal over anyways as the way he delivered his performance was less than what i'd hope for after listening to it a few times so we won't be needing the monomaker afterwards. I just wanted to be specific about what I had done with this vocal. I don't think monomaker would have any direct effect on the sound though.

Anyways, here is the link...

http://download.yousendit.com/829B49CA2CDDF8F2

please share your comments.