I'm sure this has been asked a thousand times but I couldn't find it anywhere... I have a home studio and I'm working on a new song but I can't get the instrumental to line up with my lyrics. Either the lyrics over power the instrumental or the instrumental over powers the lyrics. I can't seem to get them to sync professionally. I use Audacity as I personally find it the easiest thing for me to record and edit with. I mess with the volume before using "mix and render", I mess with amplify, and no matter what I do I just can't seem to get it just right. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Getting vocals and Instrumental to line up
- Thread starter lilfranch
- Start date
Getting things to line up
Man i feel your pain. I use mainly FL and I use Audacity as my backup or something like that. Audacity is really good. Its simple. The main thing anyone can say about this problem of the vocals vs the instrumental is one just needs to learn how to mix. When making a song you have to adjust the sound levels in your track to allow headroom for other instruments. Your voice is a very powerful instrument! And if you want it to work for you, then you may want to learn how to mix. The thing about mixing is that there is no one-for-all solution. Every song is different. Not all sounds are the same and therefore not all sounds have similar properties. For example, when I'm making a rock song, i always try to keep things as quiet as possible because the electric guitar is louder than most instruments. Then when I've finished voicing, I'll readjust the levels to where they ought to be. And again, there is no scientifically proven way to know where levels ought to be. My best advice would be to look up anything you can about the art of MIXING.
Man i feel your pain. I use mainly FL and I use Audacity as my backup or something like that. Audacity is really good. Its simple. The main thing anyone can say about this problem of the vocals vs the instrumental is one just needs to learn how to mix. When making a song you have to adjust the sound levels in your track to allow headroom for other instruments. Your voice is a very powerful instrument! And if you want it to work for you, then you may want to learn how to mix. The thing about mixing is that there is no one-for-all solution. Every song is different. Not all sounds are the same and therefore not all sounds have similar properties. For example, when I'm making a rock song, i always try to keep things as quiet as possible because the electric guitar is louder than most instruments. Then when I've finished voicing, I'll readjust the levels to where they ought to be. And again, there is no scientifically proven way to know where levels ought to be. My best advice would be to look up anything you can about the art of MIXING.
You main tools will probably be EQ and compression.
I'm assuming you only have the instrument as one wav file, not broken out into it's individual parts. If that's the case, what you essentially want to do is use the EQ to lower the dbs on the part of the beat that's clashing with your vocals. And in turn, cut some of the lower parts of your vocals (that u feel u don't need) that are clashing with the beat. This is called creating space.
In addition, you may want to make two copies of your voice.... compress one of them slightly, with a quick attack and a moderate release, maybe a 4:1 ratio or so, enough threshold to see maybe a 4-6db impact on your meter, nothing too crazy, raise the gain.... and keep the other copy dry so you keep the true essence of your vocal. See if that helps. Tweak the settings until you like what you hear.
To recap: 1) Fix the clash between beat & vocals w/ EQ.... 2) compress vocals to help them stand out.
Without the individual parts of the beat you can only do so much on your own. If you can get the beat tracked out then u can really go IN on your mix. But those quick adjustments above should help u get the ball rolling at least. It really takes a professional to do what ur trying to do and make it sound really really good. That will at least give you a halfway decent mix.
I'm assuming you only have the instrument as one wav file, not broken out into it's individual parts. If that's the case, what you essentially want to do is use the EQ to lower the dbs on the part of the beat that's clashing with your vocals. And in turn, cut some of the lower parts of your vocals (that u feel u don't need) that are clashing with the beat. This is called creating space.
In addition, you may want to make two copies of your voice.... compress one of them slightly, with a quick attack and a moderate release, maybe a 4:1 ratio or so, enough threshold to see maybe a 4-6db impact on your meter, nothing too crazy, raise the gain.... and keep the other copy dry so you keep the true essence of your vocal. See if that helps. Tweak the settings until you like what you hear.
To recap: 1) Fix the clash between beat & vocals w/ EQ.... 2) compress vocals to help them stand out.
Without the individual parts of the beat you can only do so much on your own. If you can get the beat tracked out then u can really go IN on your mix. But those quick adjustments above should help u get the ball rolling at least. It really takes a professional to do what ur trying to do and make it sound really really good. That will at least give you a halfway decent mix.
I've EQ'd and compressed the hell out of it already lol.. I mean I know what I'm doing (for the most part).. Anyway, the problem with this song is that someone on Twitter wants me to jump on it with them and sent it to me with their part done, so I guess what I should of asked from the beginning is, are there any tips/secrets for mixing vocals into an already mixed track?
Morning_Star
ProTools + Reason user
There are a lot of things that make vocals sit. Panning, eq, compression, reverb, and bussing. That goes for the instrumental and vocals.