Inside The Mix | Music Production and Mixing Tips for Music Producers and Artists
If you're searching for answers on topics such as: what is mixing in music, how I can learn to mix music, how to start music production, how can I get better at music production, what is music production, or maybe how to get into the music industry or even just how to release music. Either way, you’re my kind of person and there's something in this podcast for you!
I'm Marc Matthews and I host the Inside The Mix Podcast. It's the ultimate serial podcast for music production and mixing enthusiasts. Say goodbye to generic interviews and tutorials, because I'm taking things to the next level. Join me as I feature listeners in round table music critiques and offer exclusive one-to-one coaching sessions to kickstart your music production and mixing journey. Get ready for cutting-edge music production tutorials and insightful interviews with Grammy Award-winning audio professionals like Dom Morley (Adele) and Mike Exeter (Black Sabbath). If you're passionate about music production and mixing like me, the Inside The Mix is the podcast you can't afford to miss!
Start with this audience-favourite episode: #75: How to Mix Bass Frequencies (PRODUCER KICKSTART: VYLT)
Thanks for listening & happy producing!
Inside The Mix | Music Production and Mixing Tips for Music Producers and Artists
#161: Vocal Mixing Techniques: How to Create a Vocal Double Without Expensive Plugins
Struggling to make your vocals stand out in a mix? Whether you're wondering how to mix vocals or how to get them upfront with clarity and punch, EP 161 of the Inside The Mix podcast has you covered. In this episode, I’m diving deep into vocal mixing techniques that will help you transform your tracks. I’ll show you how to create a natural vocal double using simple timing adjustments in Logic Pro— no need for expensive plugins. Even better, these techniques are transferable to other DAWs like Ableton Live, FL Studio, Cubase, and more. You’ll also learn how to avoid common pitfalls like phasing and balance to make your vocals sound polished and full.
If you're curious about how to make vocals stand out in a mix, modern vocal mixing, or achieving that perfect vocal sound, this episode is packed with actionable tips that you can use right away.
We'll cover:
- How to create a vocal double without plugins
- Tips for improving vocal clarity and punch
- How to avoid phasing issues in vocal doubling
- A step-by-step vocal mixing workflow in Logic Pro (transferable to Ableton, FL Studio, Cubase, and others)
- Techniques for making vocals sit perfectly in your mix
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Hey, inside the Mix podcast fans. It's Anthony from Technic Tone. You can find me on YouTube and SoundCloud with my latest release, body and Spirit. You're listening to Inside the Mix podcast Now. Here's your host, mark Matthews.
Marc Matthews:Hello and welcome to the Inside the Mix podcast. I'm Mark 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 favourite synth 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. Hello, folks, and welcome to the Inside the Mix podcast. If you are a new listener, make sure you hit follow wherever you get your podcasts, and if you're watching this on YouTube, make sure you hit subscribe so you get notified of new episodes. And, as always to the returning listeners, a huge welcome back.
Marc Matthews:So in episode 159, I went through one of my favorite music production techniques for vocals, which was using the Waves Doubler, and I was also then trawling through my YouTube channel and there is a video that I posted about two, maybe three years ago, and it's a very crude video, again much like in episode 160, where I demonstrate how to quickly create a doubled vocal in Logic Pro without using any third-party plugins. This technique is particularly useful if you've got a vocal sample, or maybe you've got a recording of a vocalist and you don't have any vocal stacks. So I've decided that I'm going to redo that video from several years ago, I'm going to improve it and flesh it out in this episode and yeah, I'm in Logic Pro, but you can do this in any DAW we're just creating a really basic vocal doubling effect. So let's dive in here. We are in Logic Pro and we are going to go from this.
Marc Matthews:I wanna be free. Yeah, it'll never be the same.
Marc Matthews:To this.
Marc Matthews:I wanna be free. Yeah, it'll never be the same. Yeah, it'll never be the same.
Marc Matthews:So, to begin, I've got one vocal track and on that track is the vocal sample and it sounds like this. So this is the complete dry vocal sample.
Marc Matthews:I wanna be free. Yeah, it'll never be the same.
Marc Matthews:So then what I did is create two additional tracks. I've got Vox left and I've got Vox right. If you don't know how to create tracks in Logic Pro, you can just go to track new audio track and then make sure snap to grid is on. It's on smart, and then I'm going to option, drag this region, audio region, this vocal, down to Vox left and down to Vox right.
Marc Matthews:And if I play it now effectively, I'm going to have the same vocal sample three times, so it's just going to sound louder.
Marc Matthews:And that's not what we want. It's just making it sound louder, right, we could just push to the level if we did that. So what we're going to do is this I am going to go to the beginning of the audio region with the playhead, I'm going to command right to zoom in, so I want to see the waveform in greater detail it's probably too far and then I'm going to turn snap to grid off. Now you can do that at the top here in Logic Pro, in the editor window, or you can just press command G and it'll turn it off. So then what I'm going to do is I'm going to slightly move these out of time, because that's kind of what a singer would do, right? Or a guitarist or a musician when they double track.
Marc Matthews:The double is going to be slightly different to the original, which is how you get that luscious soundscape. It's particularly with vocals here, and I'm going to nudge the Vox Left audio region slightly to the left. So I'm gonna option and left with the keyboard to nudge to the left, and I'm gonna do the opposite with the right. I'm gonna option right, and that's nudging the Vox Right to the right. So they're slightly out of sync now. They're slightly out of time. So that's nudge. If you didn't know, in Logic Pro it's option, then direction arrow. So I'm going to Command Left to zoom out and let's play this now. So with the left and right, slightly out of time with the original.
Marc Matthews:I wanna be free, yeah.
Marc Matthews:You can see it's dropped in level and there's some phasing issues going on there. So now what we're going to do is this I'm going to go back to the beginning of this region with the playhead, I'm just going to drag to the left and I'm just going to zoom out a touch more as well so I can see more of the audio region. What we're going to do now is I'm going to pan the Vox left. I'm going to pan that minus 45. So I'm going to use similar settings that I used in the Vox Doubler in episode 159. And then I'm going to go 45 with the right. So I've got the Vox left is panned minus 45, vox right is panned 45. So let's play it now.
Marc Matthews:I wanna be free, yeah, 45. So let's play it now.
Marc Matthews:Listening to that. If you're listening with headphones, you could probably hear that the left sounds a bit louder than the right. So there's some phasing going on there. And actually if I press X, rather here, and then go to the multimeter and we play this and we're looking at the correlation here. So I'm going to play it now and the correlation. Let's have a look and see what this does.
Marc Matthews:I want to be free. Yeah, it'll never be the same.
Marc Matthews:Yeah, it's kind of jumping around the middle there, so maybe too much in terms of phasiness going on. So I'm actually going to reduce this the left and right. I'm going to go to minus 25 and I'm going to get a plus 25 and see how that sounds, see if that's an improvement.
Marc Matthews:I want to be free. Yeah, it'll never be the same.
Marc Matthews:Yeah, I think that does sound better. In the grand scheme of things, this isn't going to be as loud, or these left and rights aren't going to be as loud as the center vocal anyway. But looking at the correlation meter as well, we're not dipping into that out of phase-ness on the correlation meter, so I'm happy with that as it is. So we're going to go minus 25 and plus 25, rather than minus 45 and plus 45, like we did in the vocal doubler. Then, on each one of these tracks, I'm going to use the pitch shifter plugin, so I'm going to enable it.
Marc Matthews:So, on the left, and I'm going to use the default of vocal doubler and I'm going to drag that. I'm actually going to drag it to minus seven. I like to use between like minus five and minus seven, so I'm going to do minus seven in cents. So minus seven in cents. So I'm not using semitones and I'm going to boost the mix all the way up to 100%, all the way up to 100% on this, and I'm going to do the opposite on the other one, on Vox Right. So, on this pitch shifter, I'm going to go to vocal doubler and I'm going to drag it to seven cents and then I'm going to do 100% in terms of mix. So now let's play this.
Marc Matthews:I wanna be free. Yeah, It'll never be the same.
Marc Matthews:Cool, it's getting to how I want it to be. It's getting there. So now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna highlight vox left and vox right, because I want discrete control over both channels at the same time, and I'm gonna go to options and I'm gonna create a new VCA, a voltage controlled amplifier, and I'm going to use this to control the level of Vox left and Vox right, this doubling effect, basically. So I'm going to rename this to Vox, I'm going to call it Vox dub. There we are, and I'm going to drag this all the way down, cause at the moment, this doubling effect that I've created is at the same level as the lead vocal, which is not how I want it to be. So let's drag it all the way down, and then I'm going to gradually drag it up, so it's just tucked underneath the main vocal. So let's give that a go.
Marc Matthews:I want to be free. Yeah, It'll never be the same. I want to be free yeah, it'll never be the same.
Marc Matthews:There we go. So I've got that set at minus 9 dB for this. I'm using the VCA to control these channels here, so I've got it set at minus 9. And that sounds pretty good to me. Now, ultimately, you could play around with the pitch, the sense in the pitch shifter.
Marc Matthews:You could play around with the nudge of the audio regions themselves, you could play around with the panning, but basically those are the core settings for this doubler effect. You have a left and right, you pan them left and right and then you use the pitch shifter and then you just blend in what you have with the original audio. And the beauty of using a VCA and I don't use them enough is that if you have discrete groups for like drums, bass, pads, vocals, guitars, you can actually control the level of individual instruments in different groups, which is the cool thing about a VCA Don't use them enough and you can automate the level of a VCA as well. You can just right click on it and then create track and you can automate that level of that doubling effect in Logic Probe. So again, let's play it. I'm going to play it without the doubling effect and then I'll play it with.
Marc Matthews:I wanna be free. Yeah, it'll never be the same.
Marc Matthews:And this is with.
Marc Matthews:I want to be free. Yeah, it'll never be the same.
Marc Matthews:In fact, let's quickly check it with the multimeter, let's check the correlation meter. So I'm going to play it now and have a look at the correlation meter.
Marc Matthews:I want to be free.
Marc Matthews:Yeah, it'll all good. I mean, I wouldn't hold that as gospel, but I think it's good to check the correlation meter. When you're doing things like this, when you're duplicating audio regions, instruments, and then you're processing them like this, it's always good to check correlation because you don't want some weird phasey shit going on. So always a good one to check. But there we go, folks. A quick recap. I think I did a recap just now, but I'll do it again.
Marc Matthews:We had Vox 1, which was our main lead vocal with the audio region, two additional tracks left and right. We option drag the audio region down onto those additional tracks. Command G to turn off, snap to grid. Then we used option left and right to nudge those tracks left and right. Then we panned them left and right. In the end I settled for minus 25 and plus 25 because I felt it was too phasey, some weird shit going on when I had it. Minus 45 and plus 45. Pitch shifter I used a vocal doubler preset. I probably don't need to use the preset, to be honest. Sense minus seven on the left, hundred percent mix plus seven on the right, hundred percent mix. Create a VCA, had the VCA control him the overall level of the doubler effect and drag that up until it was tucked underneath the main vocal and we got to minus nine DB. There we go a quick way to create a vocal doubling effect in any DAW.
Marc Matthews:So I hope you found this tip useful and, if you did, I would love to hear from you. I want to include your review or feedback of an episode on Inside the Mix so you can click the link in the episode description. It's a SpeakPipe link and you can record a quick, less than 30 seconds audio review why you enjoyed the episode, why you would recommend it. It doesn't have to be this one, it can be any episode. Give yourself a shout out. Who are you, where can the audience find you online, social media handles and or your website? So not only will you feature on the podcast itself and forever be part of the podcast each month, those who enter or submit audio and audio review and feature of the podcast.
Marc Matthews:Each month, those who enter or submit audio and audio review and feature on the podcast, I will enter your name into a virtual tombola and I will pick a name out of this tombola. I think it's a tombola. Either way, I'll pick your name out of a hat and you will have the opportunity to win a Starbucks coffee voucher. And if you don't like coffee, give it to someone else and pretend you bought it for them. Coffee Voucher and if you don't like coffee, give it to someone else and pretend you bought it for them. You're doing a good thing. Don't tell them it came from me. Anyway, folks, so click that link in the episode description. I cannot wait to hear from you and your episode recommendations.
