How to Mix Acoustic Music — Part 2: Lead Vocals

submitted by David Glenn Recording on 04/12/15 1

Mixing Acoustic Pop: mixingchosen.com The Mix Academy: bit.ly/mixacademy Learn compression: learncompression.com Improve your ears: quiztones.com Mixing tips: theproaudiofiles.com Part 2 in the mixing acoustic music series. This one is all about how to mix the lead vocal. Software/Plugins: - Avid Pro Tools - Antares Mic Mod EFX — Classic Microphone Modeler - FabFilter Pro-Q Equalizer - UAD 1176LN Classic Limiting Amplifier - UAD 610-B Tube Preamplifier - UAD Studer A800 Multichannel Tape Recorder - L1 Ultramaximizer Peak Limiter - Waves CLA-76 Compressor Limiter - Waves De-Esser - P&M Echoflex — Transcript: Part two of mixing acoustic music: lead vocals. We've covered acoustic guitar. First thing is controlling breaths. In Pro Tools, we have clip gain to reduce breaths. Jaris is a great singer. but very sibilant. I highlight them, pull them down with clip gain. I have a UAD Apollo. I don't track with compression. Sometimes, I'll use it like an 1176 with UAD stuff for peak limiting, but usually I track dry. Then clip gain and volume automation to balance and level the vocal. I've raised and lowered the level of the clip gain to kind of smooth the vocal out. Jumping to the EQ chain here. We've got the FabFilter Pro Q and Mic Mod EFX. I liked the tube saturation sound. The next one I'll pull up is the de-esser. Jaris is sibilant with his S's. They can get pretty harsh, so we have to work on the mic technique. Definitely using a de-esser and also drawing them down. I de-ess early. If I over-de-ess, I can go back and tweak it or add a little bit of clarity in the upper end later, but I de-ess first. Then an 1176 for controlling peaks. Slow attack, medium to fast release. Then I've got a parallel compression chain. I've got another series on aux tracks to give control when I do parallel processing. I get a bit deeper into the plug-ins I use on my parallel chain, then I use what's called a lead vocal level. I threw on a Waves C4. The way I do my parallel chain is take the dry, unprocessed vocal, and send it to a lead vocal level. Then, the parallel compression chain also goes to the lead vocal level for a blend. Blending in the parallel compression. Then, I control it with the lead vocal level. I put a C4 on, and the phase got out of whack. I think it was a delay compensation bug. So what I did was I went back to kind of what Dave Pensado does, sending the parallel chain out to all EFX or all vocals. This is an older song, so I do still do what I taught in the other video. But there was a little bug when Pro tools 11 first came out. Anyway, moving onto the parallel compression. I've got the Waves CLA 76. Usually, I follow that up medium attack, fast release. Then a Waves L1. This is actually a thicker part of the tone than the dry. Sometimes I'll try to get that dry very present in the blend, and pull the parallel compression in. I think this is one where the parallel compression chain is going to be more dominant in the sound. What I want to do is mute the parallel compression chain. Let's see how much of that dry signal was in there. Most of that tone is coming from the parallel chain and EQ. It's a bit dramatic. I've got the 1K region. It was about 1.3 where I felt it sounded good on his vocals. So I boosted that. That's typically in area one, 800 to 1.2, somewhere in here I'll sweep through and find a sweet spot for the vocal. I don't typically lift too much in the 2 to 4K region. Added some classiness in the 10K range. A couple of frequencies that bothered me, and used the Pro Q. If you haven't seen that before, let me show you a demonstration of how you can take and sweep through frequencies. Something I'm really excited about, as an Apollo user, UAD, they recently released this, the preamp emulation of the UA 610 B. It's adding some character to it. Then effects. I wanted to keep this dry. Then the vocal delay. Vocal slap, I threw a Studer on the back of the plug-in mix. Echo Flex. Then this Studer on the back of my delay with a overdriven cassette deck preset. There's no Studer on that slap delay. I'm going to put the Studer on. So you hear the driving, artifacts, distortion. I really liked it. I didn't bring in too much vocal slap. I wanted to keep it dry, just more of a feeling rather than hearing the delay or reverb. Try using saturation on the back of your delays. The ENT vocal plate, pretty straight forward. Just kind of put them in the same space that I put the acoustic guitars in. Also a stereo delay. I was trying to create a space around the vocalist. It's a nice effect for an acoustic track. I don't get too crazy with delays when I'm doing acoustic demos. The UAD dimension D is in here too. That's the lead vocal. So cleaning up the track, working through some breaths. Sibilance is something to pay attention to. Compression to control the peaks. We've got parallel compression in there. I added some saturation, some character.

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