Music reviews
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helpful information about recording and mixing techniques. Posts written by professional engineers and musicians.
Learn about the inside secrets that engineers at Shine On Studio use in their sessions. Become a mixmaster and impress the world with your knowledge of audio production.
Vocal Mixing | Reverb EQ Secret
There are some great secrets that have been used by engineers over the years. Dialing in your reverb with the mix has always been a challenge for many young and aspiring producers. Here are some tips from the engineers at Abbey Road studios on how to get a tighter and balanced reverb level into your mixes.
Vocals love reverb to some degree. Sometimes just a touch of reverb helps the vocals find a pocket in the mix that is just the right spot. Other times, it's cool to drown the vocals in reverb for an emotional effect. Either way, it's always a good idea to treat your Reverb bus with a little EQ.
Abbey Road studios has a great way of making their reverb tracks sit just right into the mix. It has to do with how you EQ the reverb.
If you have a nice EQ, find the pocket where the vocals have a little bit of a nasal range and scoop it out. This is usually somewhere in the low mid range between 300 Hz and 500 Hz. Sweep around in the EQ spectrum until you find the frequency that doesn't seem to just sit right with your ear. If there are multiple frequencies that don't seem to work not to both of them out or as many as you need.
This will create a more open and natural reverb sound to your mix without having to boost the signal. Give it a shot and send us your feedback.
Mixing Vocals | Adding Distortion & Lo-Fi
Vocal distortion can be the glue that pulls your vocal tracks together. Just a simple side-chain with the vocals being processed through a distortion plugin or amp head can pull the vocals coward in the mix and at the same time find the right pocket for the vocals in the mix. You may be saying to yourself, "I don't want my vocals all fuzzy and gritty." Not to worry, by side-chaining the effect, you can blend in the dry and wet vocal signals to a level that works best for your mix. The distortion will add just enough color to the vocals so they feel like part of the music and not just ambiguously floating above the music. Slap some EQ on the distortion track to get a brighter or darker tone to your distortion coloring. Just don't go overboard with the vocal effects, unless that is the goal for the track. Happy mixing!
Vocal Mixing | Using delay to get wide vocals
Mixing vocals can have its challenges. Do not fret! There are ways to make your vocals big and wide without
laying on huge amounts of compression. Try this technique, add some side-chain delay sends from the main vocal. Add 3 or 4 sends with delays set to different lengths. Slowly bring up the faders on the delay tracks to blend the vocal into the mix. It's also a good idea to have different eq curves on each of the delay tracks. Play with filters to get the right tone for your mix.
