Basics of Mixing Vocals

C

caycay

New member
I was wondering what the basics were to mixing vocals, and mixing vocals into a beat/instrumental? Any tips that are crucial, like how I should pan adlibs? What basic processing to put on all vocals or adlibs? How to make vocals fit in a beat and sound clear? Any basic tips are helpful and appreciated thanks.
 
The most important thing is to mix the vocals at high priority.

I usually look at my mixing priorities something like this

1. Drums (and other key rhythmic content)
2. Vocals
3. Melodic Instruments
4. Sound Effects
5. Textures

In practice,
this means that I often work on drums to sound good by themselves and then immediately work on getting vocals to sound good with the drums.
If mixing against a rendered stereo beat downloaded from the Internet, I will sacrifice the clarity of instruments, SFX, and textures in order to make the vocals more clear.

The particular procedures for doing this are only minor variances on how you'd go about mixing anything else.

-Ki
Salem Beats
 
obviously most important is a good mic and good recording. a good pre-amp or something to run it thru imo.
compress your vocals to control the dynamics of the volume. this will help bring vocals to the front of the mix too.
eq - take out all frequencies that are not needed, for example cut all frequencies below 80 hz etc. let your vocals breath, add presence, get rid of mud etc
echo - thicken up the vocals a bit
reverb

de-ess if needed after the eq or compressor.

when you get more into it you will notice that you may need vintage warmers or you may need some parallel compressing. i also try to split the workload of my effect plug ins up.
 
Ok...how do I make Adlibs and vocal harmonies, along with the main vocals fit in the mix with a pre-mixed beat?
 
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you pan them left and right accordingly. you might also want to eq them different, most of the time the further out it goes on either side of the panorama i tend to cut more low and muddy frequencies. play with it and experiment.
 
Ok, do you put different processing on adlibs and harmonies to make them fit different than the regular vocals? Do you compress more? Do you put more reverb? Also, when eq-ing vocals do you do typically light eq-ing or do you do massive cuts like mixing a beat?
 
it depends for me, i'm not an engineer, so i may be wrong with some stuff here. generally the compression will be the same. wether or not i use 1 compressor or more my vocals usually end up with a ratio of like 7:1 or so. however many compressors in my effect chain, that stays the same for all the tracks usually. ill probably change it for softer vocals and singing though. adlibs i usually cut a lot of lows out and mud. i can't break down everything cuz its very individual. eqing is usually on the lighter side, if its recorded and compressed right. but i usually use a lot of eqs so that adds up.
just sweep thru the eq bands and find frequencies you might want to cut out or enhance.
 
7:1 dang...what's the typical ratio for a singer and her harmonies? Also how do you go about mixing poorly recorded vocals? Also, do you gate most of the vocals? Sorry about all the questions...
 
Agreed. I think some people might swap around their priorities, like I for instance sometimes would put textures right after Vocals on my list, just because they tend to form a large part of my style. But I think defining your priorities like this gives good organization to the mix, and well help with any given piece, especially vocals, if, as in most mixes, they are the centerpiece.
 
I've heard a lot of people begin their vocal mix with a compression ratio of 3:1, just to get a feel for it. I find I often leave it there in the end. I might also put a soft gate sometimes but typically cutting out the unwanted parts entirely is the best (saves on CPU strain for one).
 
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