Techniques for getting vocal levels even?

That's probably how close your holding your head to the microphone, I use a handheld which is nice because i can move my body with the music to get into it a little more, but my budy sits down and rests it on his knee and bobs so i have to slap him cuz his heads allways moving away from the mic.

If your wearing headphones you can isolate the volume of your voice much easier and you pick up on how its gonna sound like when your in the middle of doing it, and if you dont like it, delete it and start again and do it right, be your own critic
 
For vocals most of the time I just compress them so they are more even. Then you can automate the volume depending on the part. JST Gain Reduction is pretty good for leveling out vocals, though it can be pretty harsh considering it is mainly designed for metal vocals. I do still use it for non-metal tracks though. You just have to tweak the settings a little.

If you want a free solution. Just use any old compressor and compress the vocals till they are even. Don't go too hard cause then you might get rid of the dynamics.
 
The easiest answer is to add a compressor. This will bring up the quieter parts and bring down the louder parts. Be careful overdoing it, as it will make them less dynamic. You want to find the balance between level volume and decent dynamics.

Less easy answer is automation, where you adjust volume throughout the song by hand. This can take a while and be very tedious, but will also do the trick
 
Like all of us I guess, I want vocals to be solid and consistent.

I always get at least five takes, usually recording one verse or one chorus repeatedly rather than singing through the whole song. Sometimes we'll do repeated takes of single lines - it depends on the song, I often ask the singer for different approaches - "sing it with a smile" or "be angry" to try and capture some variations.

Then there's the comping - determining which parts of which takes to stitch together to get the most effective vocal line. And once that's done, the hygiene routines; trimming tops and tails, setting automation to drop the level on each breath 16db.

After that I'll often split the vocal line into loud and soft passages so I can selectively tweak the overall level of each section to get roughly the same volume throughout the song. Compression and any other processing will then deliver a more consistent result.

My vocal chain usually starts with a high pass filter, and will often have a couple of compressors and a couple of equalisers, sometimes a couple of de-essers, each adding a little pixie dust rather than trying to achieve the desired result in one hit. I use Reaper, and try to be careful about headroom throughout the processing chain, inserting a level plugin after any effect that runs hot and doesn't have a output adjustment.

For balance, I have Vocal Rider and do sometimes use that. Sometimes I also use Trackspacer, a frequency-based ducker, which is undetectable if used very subtly. I almost always write some automation to bring up or attenuate specific syllables.

It takes a lot of time. I sometimes pine for the days of multitrack tape, when the available options were so much more limited.
 
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