Evolutin of a Vocal

david baker

New member
Recently I posted the song Wasting Away on the MP3 mixing Clinic thread and got some very useful feed back .I made changes and posted it again for further input and it became very clear that the biggest thing that was causing me problems was the vocals ,I got more very useful input and re- posted it .I had only made it worse.CRAP !(not the fault of the suggestions I got to be sure ,all my own doing) .What I propose to do with this thread is take the vocal to that song from start to finish, I will post the raw vocal track and make further posts as it progress step by step. Listing the changes that I made. You all can chime in with feed back and suggestions as you see fit .I'm guessing that I may not be the only one that has struggled with getting vocals under control. Doing it this way may be of a benefit to others that are have problems as well. I will make the next post on 4/15. This thread seems like the right place to do something like this. Any thoughts on this idea ?
Thanks.:)
 
Not bad at all. She has a good voice. Dynamic are a little odd. The parts where she is belting it out actually sound lower in level than the quieter parts.

You may not want to remove all the breaths. Within reason, I really like what they bring to a performance. They make the vocal sound more natural. What I do however is to clip around the breaths and lower the level, so that they are just barely audible.

But really, this sounds pretty good. Plug it back into the mix and see how it holds up.
 
Breath sounds are subjective. I edit them out all the time. They are a matter of personal preference.
 
Thanks for the feed back, I didn't record it ,willing to bet it was done in comps which explains the level difference in the parts. Agree about the breath thing; brings a "human expressive feel to a vocal ,may end up bringing a little more subtlety back in. Next step will be to get everything on the same level. And post next revision.
Thanks.
 
I'm sorry to say, but mixing anything on its own has no purpose. The end goal isn't to have a nice sounding vocal mix, it's to have a nice sounding song WITH a good vocal mix. The EQ, compression, etc, can only be judged in the context of the mix. Solo means nothing.

Like I've said to you before, just worry about turning down the loud and bringing up the quiet within context of the music. You seem to be reading too much into things and taking steps that aren't necessary, like adding gain plugins. You don't need that. Just chop the vocal wav within phrases, or words if you have to, and adjust them individually. That's all. Don't compress or EQ or anything until the vocal levels are sitting nicely.
 
I'm sorry to say, but mixing anything on its own has no purpose. The end goal isn't to have a nice sounding vocal mix, it's to have a nice sounding song WITH a good vocal mix. The EQ, compression, etc, can only be judged in the context of the mix. Solo means nothing.

Like I've said to you before, just worry about turning down the loud and bringing up the quiet within context of the music. You seem to be reading too much into things and taking steps that aren't necessary, like adding gain plugins. You don't need that. Just chop the vocal wav within phrases, or words if you have to, and adjust them individually. That's all. Don't compress or EQ or anything until the vocal levels are sitting nicely.

I value your input ,I think there might be some misunderstanding as to what it is I am doing; What I have done so Far is to chop the vocals into phrases and edit them to get rid excusive breath and harsh sounds, the reason I have them soloed is so that I can hear these things better. No gain, or any other, plugins have been used. I am in the process of bringing the vocals back into the mix and at that point I will adjust the quite and loud parts as needed to fit in, in context with the rest of the song. Only then will I do EQ and compression as needed to make the whole thing work together. I am not trying to mix the vocals by themselves .
Thanks for your continued feed back.
 
I think there might be some misunderstanding as to what it is I am doing;

I think there is. Again, any changes you make will be impossible judge when not in the context of the mix. You can make things loud or quiet, breaths or no breaths, edit here and edit there, but in the end, those things can only be judged in the context of the song. Why are you editing breaths? Maybe they're useful in that part of the song...but we don't know that because we can't hear it. Why did you turn the vocal up in some spot? Was it too quiet? How are we to know that if we can't hear the music behind it? Perhaps the music stopped completely and the vocal was at a perfect volume.

Without the music, any change is meaningless, unless the track is so awful to begin with that it's only simple edits being done. It seems you're proposing more than that; you want to make changes to the vocal while mixing but then only showing us the raw vocal...so, without the music behind it, no one can tell you if the vocal is too loud or quiet or this or that.

So, yes, there is a misunderstanding.
 
Evolution of a Vocal

Re started , All that has been done is to chop the vocal into phrases and bring the quite parts up and the loud parts down as needed in context with the music . No plugins on vocal tracks of any kind . Slight bit of verb on over all mix.
View attachment wasting Away .Mp3
 
What, exactly, did you do to this mix David? Overall, it's substantially improved. The vocal is more consistent in volume between sections, the lisping is nearly gone (still there in some parts, like in the opening) and the song sounds more natural right now.

Is this the song with all the faders simply at 0 and no other fx but EQ on vocal? It does sound like a raw mix, to me. There's a loud pop at 4:02.
 
What, exactly, did you do to this mix David? Overall, it's substantially improved. The vocal is more consistent in volume between sections, the lisping is nearly gone (still there in some parts, like in the opening) and the song sounds more natural right now.

Is this the song with all the faders simply at 0 and no other fx but EQ on vocal? It does sound like a raw mix, to me. There's a loud pop at 4:02.

What I did was pull my head out of my let go of my ego and do what you suggested .Yes it is a raw mix; only EQ on the vocal.
Low pass filter at 60
Low cut of 2.2db at 191
Low Mid cut of 3.1 at 405
High mid cut of 1.1 at 988
High shelf boast of 1.1 at 1995
I agree there still is some of that pesky lisping ,especially during quite parts like the intro. I did AB and with and without some of the EQ moves and decided that there wasn't a Huge noticeable difference and that the EQ was worth it ; Maybe I will move the shelf to start at a higher Freq. and hear what happens. Will take another listen in morn and look out for the pop at 4:02
 
Yes it is a raw mix; only EQ on the vocal.

OK! Well, now we know there was def no reason to use a gain plugin on the vocal. The levels are pretty good right now, as they originally came. Give yourself a break, because you've probably heard this song a billion times and have lost perspective by now. Come back to it and listen closely for any lyrics that are slightly too quiet or too loud and adjust from there. Once they're sounding good to you, EQ a bit more if you need to and then work on compression.

For a serious mix, you'd want to EQ the vocal a little later, although some guys here will do vocals first. Most, I believe, work the drums and bass guitar first and then bring in the guitars and vocals later. Since you're doing this backwards, and wanting to work the vocal first, I guess we could pretend the music is how you want it, mixwise. But keep in mind that you might want to adjust that workflow later, when you get more serious and are making true projects.

There's a word in the opening section that incredibly lisp-y. It must have came to you that way because only a de-esser or artifact would create that sound, as far as I'm aware. But the EQ sounds pretty good. Good to see you used cuts and only a small top boost. Many vocal cuts can go to 5-6db, but it all depends on the source material.

Back to square one. The raw tracks sound pretty good, and it was good to hear them. Looking forward to your further changes. Hopefully I can help in some way.
 
Evolution of a Vocal

Here is the latest ,some slight adjustments to the level here and there and the addition of stacked compression :
2 compressors each set the same, input and out put level matched .
Ratio 2.5:1
Attack 3.5 ms
release 43 ms
Knee 5
about 2.5-5 db gain reduction View attachment Wasting Away Vox Comp .Mp3
On listening to it again I am hearing quite a lot of S sounds during the softer sections, perhaps due to the attack/ Release settings? may have to make some changes . Thoughts welcome, as always.
 
Evolution of a Vocal

Why are you doing this? Do you have a reason?

Its something I picked up from a couple different sources ,the idea is you use two to do light compression instead of one doing heavy. I have used it before on a track that you have complimented the vocal on. If you think that it is adversely affecting the Vocal on this track please be specific about what you are hearing . I did mention my concern about hearing a bit more S sounds and the need to make adjustment to address this.
Thanks David.
 
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