#32: How to Easily Mix Vocals Like a Professional

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Transcript

Intro: 0:00

You're listening to the inside the mix podcast with your host, Marc Matthews.

Marc Matthews: 0:05

Hello and welcome to the inside the mix podcast. I'm Marc Matthews, your host, musician producer, and mix and mastering engineer you've come to the right place. If you want to know more about your favorite symp music, artists, music engineering, and production songwriting, and the music industry. I've been writing, producing, mixing, and mastering music for over 15 years. And I want to share what I've learned with you. Hey folks. Uh, welcome back to another inside the mix music production tutorial. Once again, as with the first one, a few weeks ago, this is gonna be a short snippet into what I like to do in my mixes. Now that being said, uh, I am not the Oracle on this. This doesn't mean it's necessarily correct. Um, but it's what I do. And if it is. If it sounds good, it is good. Let's get it around the right way. So it is food, food. Get my, put my teeth back in. It is food for thought. So with that in mind, uh, what we're gonna look at today are vocal, uh, mixing techniques. so imagine I'll be given a vocal I've gone through I've edited, uh, top entailed the tracks as well, or the audio regions, depending on which DAW and which terminology you wanna use semantics. Okay. And then what I like to do is I like to go through game staging. Now I don't go through appropriate game staging with all of the tracks in my session, and that's a whole nother episode in itself. And one I'll dedicate an episode. I will dedicate to further down the line. but one technical highlights to use is pink noise. And once again, in a future episode, I'll go through that. But imagine we're in a situation now where I'm game stage now, game staging is important and it's, if you don't gain stage effectively, it is detrimental to your mix. Um, and it will make it harder for you in the long run. It'll affect all sorts of things, um, in particular, the dynamics of your mix. So what I like to do is when it comes to game staging with a vocal, for example, so I've got this vocal track here. Uh, I insert a game plug. So I've got my lead vocal here and I've got my game plugin. So I'm using logic. Uh, I've inserted a game plugin on my track. And what I do is I'll, I'll play it through. So this is what it sounds like, uh, without any sort of game processing appli, there was a time when of crystal last . Okay. Uh, so quite a nice Lu vocal there, uh, with a bit of Neo on it as well, obviously. Uh, that's something I'll address later.. Um, but in this instance, let's turn that off. Let's listen to it without bill was a time when of crystal last bill was a time when of crystal last. Now at the beginning of that audio, I just noticed there's actually a click or a pop. So I'll go in with some post production and get rid of that later on. Um, but so don't worry about that too much right now. So, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna look in, uh, so in logic, in particular, I like to mix using what's called the prepaid meter. A prepaid metering. And if I look in my track and my metering, there was a time when of crystal last. So it's peaking around mine. That's nine, which is a bit high, a bit hot for what I want for this particular vocal. So overall, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna insert what I've inserted. I'm gonna use the game plugin, and I'm gonna pull that down. So let's play. There was a time when I love of Christ last, there was a, okay. And I'm looking for anywhere between sort of minus 18, the minus 12 DB. Obviously I don't wanna go in and totally flatten it cause I wanted to have some dynamic range in there. So I got minus 0.5, seven DB. So let's play that through. There was a time when of Christa last. So at the end of this vocal in particular, now it's. Overly hot, but what I might want to do is I can see let's just looking at the wave form that it's slightly bigger than the others. So using automation. So we've got the automation lane open here and I've selected the game plugin and it's set to read. I'm just gonna create a node just before. So let's go through, there was a time when I, of crystalized. So it's crystalized. So on that part there, I'm just gonna put a node in and then I'm just gonna drop it down. that's probably too much. Just make that a bit bigger. Okay. That's let's try that. So drop it down slightly time. When out of crystalized bill it's really subtle. So overall minus 5.7 DB using the game plugin, and then when it gets to crystallize, I've automated it. So it goes down to minus 6.4 and the idea being it's gonna take the load off the compressor. So. The compression plugin I'll go through later on or another tutorial. It's gonna take the load off that. So it's not gonna, they're not gonna be drastic, dramatic peaks. So if you do have a vocal track come through, that is dynamically, very different. So quiet passages, louder passages. What I suggest trying out is automation of a game plug. In your gain staging. So go through, identify where those peaks are and then automate the gain level just to catch those peaks and bring them down. Now, obviously don't do it. So it's detrimental to your mix and it sounds, um, it doesn't sound natural, but just bring it down slightly so that it takes the load off of the compressor. So give that a go and see how you. Let's take a quick break from this episode so that I can tell you about a free resource that I made for you. It's a PDF checklist that describes what you need to do to properly prepare a mix for mastering. So you've done the hard work and you love your mix yet. Suitably preparing a mix for mastering is often overlooked by musicians resulting in delayed sessions, excessive, back and forth conversation and frustration on both parts. I want to help fix that. So if you want this re resource, just go to www. Synth music, mastering.com. As this checklist will help and guide you to make the mastering process as smooth, transparent, and exciting as possible. So again, the URL is www dot synth music, mastering.com for this free preparing a mix for mastering checklist. Let's get back to the episode. Okay. So this next technique is a technique that I like to use. And I've magi this from the great Bobby Osinski and his mixed engineer handbook is amazing and fantastic. And I strongly encourage you go and check it out if you haven't done so already and also follow him online and I'll put a link to the handbook in the show notes. So this particular technique, what it does is it uses three reverb sends. Now I'm a huge advocate of busing out, uh, time-based process. and, um, there is a reason for that. One of the main reasons I like to use it is the automation of the SC. Um, so in this instance, I've got three reverbs, I've got a short, I've got a medium and then I've got a long. So what I've done is I've used a website called reverb time calculator, and I'll purling to that in the show notes. And what enables me to do is I can put in 130 BPM, the BPM of this track, and it gives me an approximate, uh, reverb to K time and also a pre. Uh, sorry, a pre decay rather. And in doing that, um, it gives me a starting point for my reverb. So I can go in there, put that in. I can start mixing straight away and then I can come back as I listen to the track in the mix and actually start to move and change those values to suit the mix itself. So in this instance, I've got my vocal track. And I've got three sends zero sends 21, 22, 23, and they are post, uh, post pan. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna play without, so this is the vocal. There was a time when out love of Christa last. Okay. And what I'm gonna do now is in the short reverb, I'm just gonna put it up. So what I've used is I've used verb suite and this verb suite, I've got a vocal plate on there and it's set to 455 millisecond decay with a pre delay of, uh, 3.5. To correct myself earlier. I'm gonna crack myself again. I said, pred decay, and then pred delay. Again, my words mixed up today is very, very hot in the UK at the moment when I'm recording this. Um, so my apologies. So let's dial that in. So let's play this. There was a time when of Christa last, there, there was a time when of crystal last, there was a time when, after of crystal. Okay. Gives it a nice bit of width, a nice vocal plate, very clean sounding. I do like that. Okay. So the next one let's dial in our medium. So for the medium, once again, I'm using verb suite. Um, I've got 1.8 under K uh, it's a plate again. I do like my plates. Um, they're not just great for reading off of, and you've got 28, uh, millisecond predate, which is probably quite high. It's probably higher than what I want, but let's dial that in and see what it sounds. There was a time when, after of crystalized, there was a time when of crystal last. Okay. So it sounding nice and lush it sounding nice. And the spread on it's really nice as well, and it's not overbearing and it's just sort of like pulling together, but it's not swamping the vocal, which is key here. Um, and it's one thing I try and stress with my mixes. It's one thing I'm not massively keen on with my mixes is swamping the vocal. So, and then what we have is a mammoth long reverb. Now this is a huge reverb. It's 3.4, um, seconds on the decay, which is massive. And it's a whole reverb, this one part in particular, but once again, using a plate, um, so pred, this is 52, which once again is probably quite high, but with this one it's very subtle. I probably won't have too much of it in the mix. So I'm just gonna bring it in. There was a time when Christa last there was, it starts the time when I starts to swap the vocals and just gonna duck it back was a time when I, of crystal last, there was a time when I, of crystal. Okay. So the great thing about this technique is you can have these three revamps. You can play around with the valleys, depending on what effect you want to get, but they stick to the vocal, but they don't overbear it. And they don't muddy the vocal. Um, what I also suggest doing now, these particular plugins, they do come with EQ. So you can roll off the lows and add a bit to the highs in the mids as well. And I like, I always sort of roll off the lows beyond a point and in the highs as well, but I always do it in context of the mix. So, what I'm gonna do now is, um, it is a very hot day and I'm hoping that my computer will not crash cuz of the heat when I play all this together. So let's have a listen without the reverb in context of the mix. Okay. And let's play with. Was a, was a, I'm just gonna boost the long re it's probably too much bring it back. That's the last two was time without the last two. And with the. The last film was a time without the Kristin last. No, that's to say with that, you can hear that it's not muddying the mix. It's not muddying the vocal. It's a really, really nice technique. Um, if you wanna learn more about the history behind the technique, do go and research Bobinski and look in that particular book, but that is it for this episode. So two techniques that I hope give them will help give them a try. So that's game St. and automating the game plugin. And then there is the vocal technique of using the short, medium and long reverb. Um, as always with this. feedback is the only way that I can grow this podcast and make it better. So any feedback is much appreciated, whether that's via Instagram, Facebook group or via email, you'll find, um, the email and the show notes. Or as I say, any feedback is amazing, um, and will help me only improve the, uh, the podcast. And in particular, these music production tutorials. Off the back of that. I strongly suggest if you're on Facebook, going to Facebook and searching inside the mix podcast community, and there is a group where you can go in and there's loads of exclusive podcast content, more tutorial videos, and a really, really fantastic supportive network of artists and fans, um, of the podcast and also, uh, loads and loads of fantastic music being released weekly in there. So please do go check that out. And, uh, that is it for me today and, uh, look out for the next episode.