Mixing Vocals with Dead Soul Revival
If you’ve been following my “first single release” journey for my new band deadsoulrevival.com you know I’ve been examining how we recorded, mixed, and promoted our upcoming release. You can download Black Roses and Down for the Last Time at the link above.
Today let’s get into vocals and how to mix them.
For an even more depth look into vocals pick up a copy of my course The Sound Visualization Method.
To get started I will listen to my vocal tracks in solo and see how the frequency balance is holding up. I like to roll off some low end up to the 100 hz range or so. This is going to get rid of any rumble lurking around in the recording. Once you start compressing a vocal you don’t want anything unwanted like boomy low end to be boosted.
If the vocal sounds boxy at all I’ll hunt around in the low mids to see if I can pull some of that out. Approximately 500 hz range but it really depends on the individual voice.
Then I’ll usually want to add some top end with a high shelf boost. I start off at 8K and experiment with the frequency knob to see if there’s a better spot. I’ve found once the full band is playing the high end can be boosted more than I would have in solo. This helps the vocal cut and sound more expensive.
The next thing I like to do with vocals in my mix session is to get them sitting at a relatively even volume throughout the song. With rock and metal mixes vocals can easily get lost if they are a little low volume wise so I like to get this ironed out early on.
My go to’s for vocal compression are an LA-2A or equivalent and an 1176 style compressor. Generally I am using multiple compressors in series on vocals. These are set to pretty gentle settings so the vocal never sounds like it’s over compressed.
First I like to try the LA-2A. Since it has a slow attack and fast release time it works well on vocals to gently make them less dynamic. I experiment with 3-7 db ob compression. Once it starts to sound obvious I back it off.
Then depending on the vocal performance I may add another LA-2A or an 1176 style compressor. If it’s the 1176 it’s because I want compression to kick in quicker. Try 4:1 with a medium attack and fast release. Adjust the threshold to taste.
The “acceptable” level of a vocal in your mix can really vary depending on the style and your artistic vision. I have found that good reference material can really help when making this call.
To me I like a vocal to sit in the mix so you can hear every word but it’s not sitting on top of the instruments too much. Once a vocal gets too out front for me the mix can lose some power. After checking out reference material you may be surprised at what the vocal level actually is on some of your favorite songs.
I generally avoid straight up doubles. In other words, the same part at the same volume. I prefer to tuck doubles, triples, etc. in 6-9 db below the main vocal. It will help thicken things up but it is not obvious. It just makes the singer sound larger than life. Effects will help with this as well.
Usually my main lead vocal part is straight up the middle for verses and choruses. I like to exploit the stereo spectrum on choruses so often I’ll have a double and triple panned left and right. I use the exact same eq and compression on these tracks as my main vocal. This way the performance sounds consistent.
I’ll often have a verse vocal bus and a chorus vocal bus. These both feed in to my main vocal bus. Because I often approach these two sections in at least slightly different ways and his makes it easier to wrangle everything.
Often verse dynamics can be different than choruses so this makes working out those balances easier as well. Verses may be a little more chilled out or sung a little differently compared to the chorus. You can create illusions for how loud the band is playing by where you place the vocal volume wise.
If the vocal is more in the mix during choruses for instance it can make it sound like the band is playing louder on the chorus. In this way you can make things sounds more or less intense.
Next time I’m going to be talking about vocal fx like reverb, delay, etc. and how done correctly this can really take your mixes up a notch.
Until then…
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