I feel like giving up....

C

Crazed1

New member
Okay so, whenever i try mix my vocals or my mates vocals, i EQ them (not too much cause it ain't needed) and compress it, add a little bit of delay, etc... and it sounds good and all, but my vocals are kind of like squashed inside the beat, they are quiet , (You can hear them clearly no problem cause they are mixed nicely with the beat and all but I want them louder/brighter so then when i try to increase the gain from the compressor, it will start clipping, (goin red) which obviously i dont want that... and even then,, the vocals don't sound "bright"


any suggestions? tips?
 
How do they sound when you are just playing the drums only? You may have too much going on in the beat. Try carving out some frequencies from the other instruments that are interfering with your vocals. You can also layer the vocals and add a pinch of distortion to the layered track. If you want bright though, you'll have that manage that through EQ. Boost around 12K and above.
 
everything sounds good, just my vocals are too quiet so when i try increase the volume of them , they go in the "red"
 
Crazed1 said:
Okay so, whenever i try mix my vocals or my mates vocals, i EQ them (not too much cause it ain't needed) and compress it, add a little bit of delay, etc... and it sounds good and all, but my vocals are kind of like squashed inside the beat, they are quiet , (You can hear them clearly no problem cause they are mixed nicely with the beat and all but I want them louder/brighter so then when i try to increase the gain from the compressor, it will start clipping, (goin red) which obviously i dont want that... and even then,, the vocals don't sound "bright"


any suggestions? tips?
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What does the make up gain have to do with loudness?
The make up gain is there to make sure that you actually improved the sound rather than devaluing it after the process.

Our ears can be tricked into thinking that we improved the sound, if the sound is louder with the effect on, so that's the purpose of the make up gain on every plugin.

Just gentle boost with a high shelf for your brightness :)
 
The old expression; can't have your cake and eat it too.

Somewhere, you're going to have to cut something to make everything fit together. There are frequencies in your beat and vocals that are colliding too much and it's building up. I don't recommend cutting the vocals necessarily because you can make them sound too thin fast.

Rather, address your beat. You more likely will have to go back to the arrangement and move some things around / take some things away. The more full your vocal is, the less intense your beat should be.
 
Wallengard said:
Have you tried lowering the rest of the beat, instead of raising the volume of the vocals?
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This is exactly it. Lower everything else. I expect that you have created a great beat, they tracked vocals and are mixing them in. Problem is that your electronically (I assume) created beat no doubt has less dynamic than the human voice and so is pretty loud all over, where as your voice is up and down. Unless you compress the hell out of it (and make it sound awful), your voice is never going to compete.

get the vocals sounding excellent in isolation (which it sounds as though you have), and then lower everything else until they sit right. When the mix is right, you can address the overall track volume with the mastering process. Gotta get that mix right before you worry about loudness.
 
Hearing the track would be a lot more helpful but im guessing if you used delays you probably spaced them out to much? try them in mono maybe or try rearranging the mix around the vocals... either way you will only find out the best result if you play around with it right?
 
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just boost around 400 hz to12k like **** and decrease the volume to relative level. should help
 
Real musicians are those who seek help and those who patiently help those who seek help instead of demotivating them
 
Did you just say you are trying to get your vocals louder by using the make up gain with compression? Make up gain is for proper gain staging, not for bringing your output to the level you want it at. (Well it is, but the level you want it at as the same perceived level that it came into the compressor, not your final mix level)

After the compressor throw another EQ on and play around with boosting 5k+ till you get the right colour you want.
 
Parallel compression is your friend. I like to put a distortion unit on my aux send followed by heavy compression. Then just mix them together and your sound overall should be fuller because not only do you have that dry signal (including your effects chain), but the compressed distortion adds the perfect amount of cohesiveness to the track imo. Good luck getting this sorted out.
 
Crazed1 said:
Okay so, whenever i try mix my vocals or my mates vocals, i EQ them (not too much cause it ain't needed) and compress it, add a little bit of delay, etc... and it sounds good and all, but my vocals are kind of like squashed inside the beat, they are quiet , (You can hear them clearly no problem cause they are mixed nicely with the beat and all but I want them louder/brighter so then when i try to increase the gain from the compressor, it will start clipping, (goin red) which obviously i dont want that... and even then,, the vocals don't sound "bright"


any suggestions? tips?
Click to expand...

What you said made literally no sense..... No I am serious you have to explain that again because I will tell you why it makes no sense.

First you said "vocals are kind of like squashed inside the beat, they are quiet" <---- This is word for word what you said

So first I am thinking your voice is too low because you said your vocals are quiet

but then you contradict your last statement and say this "You can hear them clearly no problem cause they are mixed nicely with the beat"

Now I am confused

How can your vocals be quiet/squashed inside the beat YET you can HEAR them and they are CLEAR because they are MIXED NICELY with the BEAT??????

That makes no sense to me....... literally.... it is wort then giving me a confusing math problem that has no real answer and is a riddle....

When my voice is squashed in the beat my voice is less hearable, less clear and lower, yet you say your voice is clear and hearbale yet quiet at the same time....????

Out of all that confusion this is the only thing I can say because I still do not understand how both of those statements can be true at the same time because I have yet to see it when I record stuff.

LIST OF THINGS THAT MAY HAPPEN

#1 - The beat was badly mixed/mastered. This is the number 1 problem I had most of the time when I can't get any of my vocals to sound good, usually who ever made the beat mixed it very crappy and no matter what I do my vocals conflict with the beat and just never sounds right, but if I record vocals on a different beat I will notice my vocals are much better which shows its a problem with the beat and not with me mixing it. So maybe the problem is simply the beat is not mixed well and parts of the beat is conflicting with your voice and no matter how well you edit your voice your voice will still sound like it can't "Fit" or is "Squashed", the only way I think you can fix this problem is to have the files to the beat and mix the instruments correctly so they don't mess with your voice.

#2 - PANNING - maybe alot of the instruments on the beat are panned where your voice is??? Pan your voice in different places and see if it fixes anything, if it doesn't then this isn't the problem

#3 - The beat is too loud or clipping ? I assume its not clipping though if you are checking your voice for clipping

#4 - You compressed way to much or need to re-EQ your voice.
- This could be the problem if the problem is not the beat itself, maybe when you EQ'd your voice you raised parts of your voice that conflicts with a certain instrument in the beat? If that is a problem then you would have to go back in your EQ and lower that so its not conflicting as much.

Also if you compressed your voice too much then your voice will sound drowned out very bad like someone took your voice and just smothered it with a pillow, but you said you can hear your voice CLEAR???

The other thing I do not get is you said your voice is CLEAR but its not BRIGHT???

Maybe I am a noob when it comes to certain terminology but I thought clear and bright is sort of the same thing when it comes to EQing vocals or maybe I understood that wrong...

All I know is when I raise the high end of my voice it makes it more clear and bright, go EQ the high ends, but you'll need a program to lower the "S's" in your voice that get raised as well from doing that.

Or maybe your mic sucks :D but if you can hear yourself clear maybe your mic does not suck :D

Your gonna have to let us hear it to really hear whats going on. Nobody cares if you sound bad or good, upload the file then just delete it after we hear it if you don't want anyone to hear it. You can't get better if you don't know whats going on.
 
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Send the tracks to me? I'll make your vocals clear, full sounding and they will sit on top of the mix and i'll tell you what I did afterwards. I been where you been, it sucks.
 
SwagProductionz said:
not about my ego.. it's more than enough musicians now.. the world could use less... and if you're hearts not in it.. then why do it.. feel me
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So is it about your heart or the money? Cause I remember you saying something about money. I can't feel you if you don't know what you're feeling first.
 
It's kind of hard to give advice without hearing the track, but parallel compression is a good tool for keeping the vocal present without taking the life out of it. If the clarity problem isn't due to the vocal being too dynamic, try copying the track and putting some other bright effect on it, like distortion. Sometimes a second vocal track with the left and right channel pitched up and down a few cents will put a little emphasis on the sides of the mix and give it more clarity, depending on what else is panned hard to the sides.
 
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