Mixing Home Studio Vocals to
Sit in the Mix and Have More Energy

 

Are you struggling to get your vocals to sit right in the mix? Do the vocals lack energy? Have no fear, in this video you’ll learn how to approach mixing home studio vocals to make them sit well in the mix and have more life and power.

Vocals are arguably one of the hardest “instruments” to make sound great and professional in a mix. Sometimes it’s because the vocal performance itself lacks quality and other times it’s the recording that wasn’t that great. Even if these two aspects are in order, home studio musicians still struggle to get the vocals to sound right. I know I did for a long time.

My Approach to Mixing Vocals:

First of all, mix in mono to hear better where the frequencies are overlapping and fighting for space. In other words, to hear better where the vocals should be in the mix and what frequencies are poking out as annoying, muddy or boxy.

EQing

Start with an EQ to cut out the low end, usually around 80-120 Hz. This frequency content isn’t giving anything to the vocal track. It just eats space from other instruments.

Listen to the vocal track. Pinpoint the problem areas. Does it sound boomy, muddy, boxy, honky or harsh? Locate the frequency that bugs you, by boosting and sweeping around with a narrow Q. Then cut some of that out. How much to cut and how wide Q to use?

In the video you see me narrowing down a range of harshness in my vocal track. It was pretty broad area, from around 1.7 kHz to 2.5 kHz. This is why I used a more wider Q, to handle all of the harsh frequencies with one band of EQ.

Sometimes it can be more narrow area and then you could use more narrow Q. Start with 1.5 to 3 dB cut and listen if you got rid of what you wanted to.

There can be more than one problem frequencies. Like in the video you see me cutting the harshness out, but also some plastic, honky sound from around 700-800 Hz.

Moving on. Boost with a high shelf from 8 to 10 (or sometimes even 14) kHz upwards. This gives the vocal the much needed top that really separates amateur mixes from professional ones. Start from 8 kHz and listen what works.

Compressing

There’s two types of compression that I use in this video. The first one is supposed to tame the loudest peaks of the vocal and bring up the quiet parts. In other words the job of the first compressor is to make the vocal track more consistent by evening out the dynamic differences.

Fast to medium attack and fast release work well most of the time. Adjust the threshold so that the loudest peaks are making the compressor to do some gain reduction. Listen to where the vocal track starts to sound more even. Usually around 3 – 6 dBs will do the job.

The next compressor is all about bringing energy and life to the vocals. Use medium to slow attack and fast release. The slower the attack time, the harder your consonants will sound. You can compress pretty hard, since this will emphasize the attack of the vocal. This is why it adds energy and power to the beginning of the words, making the overall vocal track sound more aggressive and forceful.

De-Essing

Compressing vocals can make the sibilance to come across as annoying and excessive. Luckily there’s a tool to fix this: De-Esser. It’s basically a single band compressor, where you can determine the frequency range that it listens and compresses when it detects the set frequency.

Use De-Esser before the heavy compression, to get rid of the excess sibilance before it is compressed hard. You could go with a preset and adjust from there.

There’s a button that let’s you listen only the frequency that the De-Esser is listening to. Move around the frequency selector and pinpoint where the sibilance seems to be. After this adjust the threshold to get rid of it.

Summary

In truth, these three tools do the heavy lifting in mixing vocals. Focus on these and get them right. After these steps the vocals are 80-90% done. What to do after EQ, compression and de-essing?

You could try saturation to make give the vocal some color, warmth and / or thickness. Also adding some space with reverb and or delay might be a good idea, since vocals can sound unbearably dry. Lastly there’s the automation. I’ll be covering these steps in the next posts so stay tuned!

Hopefully you found this video helpful. If there’s anything you want me to cover in the future videos let me know. Send me an email or leave a comment below. Ask if there’s anything unclear or if I left something out. Cheers!

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