Blending Vocals in a Mix 101

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Joe E

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Ok so I see that lots of people have trouble getting thier vocals to sit in a mix. I see suggestions like add compression, or mic placement. That's all fine and dandy. But lets really get into how to get it to sit in the mix:

Lets say that I'm working on new project: I've carved out a spot in my kick for my bass and spot in my bass for my kick. The two inst. sound great together. Now bring in some snare and cymbals. I add a pair of rhythm Guitars in panned 9 and 3. I carve out low-mids on one and high mids on the other so that they sit well together in the total mix. OK so I bring up the volume on the mix and it sounds great. Everythings is blended and compressed just right.

Now lets add vocals: I start with a nice fat vocal track that on its own sounds wonderful. As I bring it up in the mix, I need to keep bringing the vocal up and up until it sounds wonderfull again. But now its too loud. So I lower it. Now its not wonderful anymore.

Whats wrong? Well obvoiusly a great sounding vocal track does not always fit into a great sounding mix. Why not? The answer is already in this post.

Well, let's see who know's what around here and help some of the ones with less skill level.

What would you do first?


If I don't see to many posts, I'll jump back in and give you a few options.
 
well first of all you are calling it a "great sounding mix" yet the vocal wasnt even in it yet....since it has a vocal ill assume that the song is somewhat vocal oriented...the mix should be built around it.....a track that sounds phat and awesome solo'ed doesnt isnt always the best thing for the mix......

bring up your drums and bass first and get them working like you did before....NOW bring in the vocal and get it working with the drums as bass...EQ the vocal as little as possible.....if you can get this drum/bass/vocal mix sounding pretyy good you are on your way...add in everything else from there and build around.....

another method is to start with all faders up, but still work in the order i described...this helps from any surprises popping up when you bring up a new fader...i think this one is more efficient......
 
Nice going Gidge

Your absolutely right. This mix was built without the vocals being the focal point.

The initial mix did everything right with regards to carving out a nitch for each of the instruments, but left out the important one. The voice.

In the above case you would have now place the voice in the mix and then start EQing the Rhythm guitars again to fit the voice. Or bring those faders down and work on the voice first.

Most mix engineers bring up bass and drums first, then vocals. Once they have that working, they add the rest.

We also try to get the voice just a touch louder than the Snare and kick/bass combo.

I've been asked and have read a bunch of times "why can't I get the vocals to sit in the mix". Because... your are trying to get the vocals to sit in the mix, Instead of trying to get the mix to sit around the vocals.

Bravo!
 
Nice post! Now my question is this, what freqencies do you recomend carving out? You touched on kick and bass sitting well together, what other instruments need carving? I have a spectral analyzer can this help to determine competing instruments and frequencies?
 
Gidge the man w/ the most........Yo, that was my answer as well...but I got beat to it......DAMN....that would have made me look smart.....:D seriously though it took me awhile to learn that...and I just started figuring that out recently actually......As an alternative to the above recommendations.....is that I usually do scratch or scrap takes based on the vocal inorder to get a good idea how things will sound in the end.....and then when i figure out what works for the vocal I then go back and do everything over....It's kinda tidious and the above way is probably better, but that's just how i do it cause it's comfortable for me to do.......


I really don't EQ all that much , just a tad here and there..maybe a db or two on each instrument that's all......I find that when I have the right rythmn, the right drums and the right base and the right tempo...really just the right arrangement to compliment the vocals (which I always figure out from the scrap tracks) that the EQ issue isn't always that neccessary.....

and joe your right ....this is a good post...nice job buddy


-nave
 
I've been waiting for all my prizes to come in the mail for years but they never do :mad:





-nave :D
 
I'd like to give my interesting philosophy on "fitting it in the mix".

The bottom line: "fitting it in the mix" is an old wive's tale.

If it sounds good by itself. It'll sound good in the mix. Think about it! If you are running your mix and you think the kick is way too muddy in the lower midrange, then it's not the mix that is doing this, it's the kick itself!

Your vocals aren't standing out enough? It's not the rest of the mix, it's the vocals themselves. If the vocals sound really good by themselves, they will sound good in the mix.

I always have fellow engineers say, "well i'm having trouble getting the bass guitar to fit in the mix and not clutter the kick". I tell them to listen to the bass guitar by itself and pay attention to the low end. After listening they'll agree the low end is too hot.

So i'm just saying that if it doesn't fit in the mix...it doesn't sound good by itself.

This is also kinda Tom lord-alge's philosophy on mixing. Listen to his mixes (blink 182 - take off your pants and jacket, I think he did that one sara mclaughlin CD he did too and the mix sounds amazing.)

that's my view on "fitting it in the mix"

Pay more attention to the individual instruments themselves before you try to fit in the mix.
 
Using that philosophy.....
explain to me how a acoustic guitar can sound great by itself yet will never cut through a mix, unless you cut it drasticly and change the sound to a degree that it sounds discusting by itself yet fits in like a glove to the mix........
If you want I'll give you some more examples.
I'm not sure I got your drift....
You bass example is as problematic - a bass can sound fat and warm and all around great. Yet when blended you might have to make it more honky cutting and brighter. Soloing it it will sound like crap, but blending it in will make it sound great.

If you mean that to make it sound good in a way that it blends, well....... then you are saying the sane thing everybody else is saying.
 
Excellent Folks, This what I hoped would happen, a great discussion on real mixing.


You can kind of compare this to playing live. You go to a gig and set up and catch a great sound during sound check. THen every thing comes up and the show starts. All of a sudden that great bass sound is getting lost in the mud. SO the bass player reaches over and cuts a little around 60-80 hz and lets the kick come thorugh with out fighting. THen he adds a little around 250hz so he can hear the attack. Wow that sounds great. NOw the guitar player is getting lost in the middle so cranks up the mid knob on his amp maybe (500hz) and warms up his rhythm guitar. Now the band is groovin' And the lead kicks in and he can't cut through so he cranks up the treble knob or around 2.5-3k. You folks have just built a mix and did not know it becasue each of you were doing your own part. Now if you have a sound man he has to adjust front of house every time you adjust on stage, but thats another post.

I believe you have to start with a great sound but tow instruments like kick and bass take up the same space in the freq spectrum. So you need to make a space for both or on the old spectrum analyzer you would se a large bump at the 60-250 hz range. You could Eq durring mastering but what you have then is two instruments competeing for the same space at a lower concieved volume.

IN Nashvile they use a ghost kick sound. Where as you almost do not hear the kick because they blend it into the bass. The bass player then matches his playing to the drummers kick. Thus you hear the attack of the kick but the sound comes off the bass. This makes the kick sound like it is tuned to the key of the song.
 
Oh yea one more thing. For the most part a lead instrument can occupy the same space as a vocal beacuse they rarely are happening at the same time.

Carve out the bottom for the bass/kick, carve out the middle for vocals/rhythm/synths. The top ( 5-15K )does not need a lot of carving becasue the upper freq get very little continious action. IE: a cymbal crash, harmonics or tamborine etc. These are thin tones used sparsely and are a little harder to bulid up the freq spectrum
 
Well Joe...

It's nice to see you so enthusiastic :)
But for the record, a lot of the Eq suggestions you have mentioned are what I call text book suggestions and in theory work (although the 500 boost in the A. guitar I dont particuly like...)
But in a real senerio of a mix every thing is different from song to song, from style to style from recording to recording....
A healthy approach to a mix is to hear it and decide as if it is a world of its on.
When I was studying sound, I would drive my teacher crazy with questions like but what Eq move to I make now and with what EQ can I make room for this and what EQ did you just do.
He always looked at with with discorn and say " I know very little about EQ don't ask me....I dont look at the knobs.....I use my hearing.....leave me alone.....

That is why Gidges suggestion for home recers sounds the most solid. Get the Kit and bass and vocals to sit and your more then half way home.
For home recordists rasing all faders is asking for troubles or for the aid of god.........
 
Shailat,

I agree that for some pushing all the faders up front is a biggie mistake...it is for me alot of times...but im working on it....see if i take it one at a time, i find that everytime i bring a new track in, im going back to re- EQ everything i just done......if all the faders were up to start with i might have had a better reference and do less going back to re-EQ.....

i kinda do a combo now...i do the drums,bass, and vocal first with no other faders...i get that grooving where i want...check it, double check it....then i throw up all the rest of the faders which in my arrangemnts really isnt much and work from there.....and i ALMOST NEVER make eq adjustments to the drums/bass/vocal mix...i try to make everthing else fit around it....my mixes still suck but i find it works best for me.....
 
Here's another trick that helped me last night (trying to get a prog-metal ballad to sound like Dream Theater's Awake):

Besides typical bass/kick contention, I was having trouble getting the snare and the keys to be audible but not overpowering. What helped was to listen to the whole mix, concentrating on the instrument that was giving headaches. Then solo that track and listen for what changes: what jumps out as suddenly audible that you can't hear in the mix? If it's something you don't care about, EQ it out!!! It's just muddying up some other track. If it's something you DO care about, you've got to figure out what other track(s) is(are) masking it and get THAT fixed so that you can hear the quality you're trying to bring out.

I resloved the kick/bass problem mostly with the kick, by giving it more high-end "snap" and pulling out the real-lows. For this kick in this song, I found no audible difference between the straight kick and the kick with a 66Hz low-cut. That was all it took to give the bass back the bottom. I also had to pull all the lows out of the guitar (most stuff is like this now, anyway) and let the bass make the guitar sound like it's got more low-end.

Lastly, we had 5 close mics on the toms, and they were all un-muffled. Listening to each one soloed revealed massive noise, clatter, and resonances. I really didn't give it much thought at first, but once I heard it, I couldn't believe the mix worked at all!! You can try gates if you want, but IMLTHO, if you're in a DAW, do this with a sample editor. In Logic Audio, it's really easy, and even though it took about an hour to do it for a 4-minute song, the garbage I got rid of was WELL worth the time. Not looking forward to our 12-minute opus, though... :)
 
Johnboy Walton said:
Here's another trick that helped me last night (trying to get a prog-metal ballad to sound like Dream Theater's Awake):

Besides typical bass/kick contention, I was having trouble getting the snare and the keys to be audible but not overpowering. What helped was to listen to the whole mix, concentrating on the instrument that was giving headaches. Then solo that track and listen for what changes: what jumps out as suddenly audible that you can't hear in the mix? If it's something you don't care about, EQ it out!!! It's just muddying up some other track. If it's something you DO care about, you've got to figure out what other track(s) is(are) masking it and get THAT fixed so that you can hear the quality you're trying to bring out.
Click to expand...


This is a real cool approach I think I will start to apply. It forces you to really listen. Cool. Thanks for the advice!

Good thread, btw.
 
Re: Well Joe...

Shailat said:
It's nice to see you so enthusiastic :)
But for the record, a lot of the Eq suggestions you have mentioned are what I call text book suggestions and in theory work (although the 500 boost in the A. guitar I dont particuly like...)
But in a real senerio of a mix every thing is different from song to song, from style to style from recording to recording....
A healthy approach to a mix is to hear it and decide as if it is a world of its on.]



Of course I was making a general statment as to how a live session "might" occur. And for that I do give a text book explination. OR better yet a starting point for trial and error.

These are also a text book Freq's that I would start with on a mix if I was hearing freq clashing.

I think the whole point of this post was to get the beginer engineer to think about his entire mix early on. And that you build a mix around the main instrument (or voice) and not the other way around.
Click to expand...
 
Johnboy Walton said:


. . . let the bass make the guitar sound like it's got more low-end.
Click to expand...


I like that quote. Very good way of putting it. The bass is there to make the guitar sound fuller and the percussion more musical. Bass players are so damn underappreciated. :)

If I might chime in my two cents, I just think a good spectrum analyzer will help pick up some of the slack where your ears aren't cutting it. In keeping with your theory of listening for things that jump out when soloed that aren't heard in the mix . . . just because you can't actually hear it in the context of the mix doesn't mean that you aren't hearing it. Often it can be a very subtle texture. Often a good analyzer can help reveal if any other tracks need that frequency or not.

It also helps by confirming what I am hearing, and by revealing new things my ears may not have noticed. Either way, it should be viewed as more of a "second opinion" to the diagnoses your ears make.
 
chess,

First, the whole bass-as-guitar-bottom thing came from Dream Theater's "Awake" album. After a few hours of mixing my own project and then going back to that as a reference, I realized that what I thought was good, full low guitars, was actually all bass guitar. The guitars themselves are a barely audible buzz in the upper-midrange. I realized that's how they made the low end sound so full without the bass and guitar engaging in a mud-fest competition. I tried it on my own mix, and now the bass sounds awesome, but I've got some harshness in the sustained keys and a little mid-range "punk" in the kick I've gotta fix. I'll post an MP3 later.

As to your spectral analyzer comments, I agree that just because I can't hear it in the mix doesn't mean it's not there. That's why I spent 2 hours cleaning up the tom tracks. I couldn't hear the mud when they weren't being hit (acutally, last night, I could), but it REALLY stood out on its own! It's just I'm a lame-eared newbie trying desperately to make this work. Every time I sit down, I hear something new. I mean, the biggest part of this is ear-training. As to using a spectral anayzer, I don't have one that has a good scale so you actually pick out frequencies, so I don't trust it. Also, I do subscribe to the Meek theory that, "If it sounds good, it is good." But if you've got a good one that works for you, I'd LOVE to hear about it!

Oh yeah, and WE bassists ARE underappreciated, especially when we're the tracking, mixing, and live-sound, engineers, too. And even more so when our drummers know everything and won't let us spend a day re-positioning drum mics (or moving them once we've got them set because they're "in the way")!
 
Johnboy Walton said:
It's just I'm a lame-eared newbie trying desperately to make this work . . . As to using a spectral anayzer, I don't have one that has a good scale so you actually pick out frequencies, so I don't trust it.
Click to expand...

Ahh. But at least you are a newbie with a brain, and a good one of those is far more powerful than a good ear. That's my theory and I think even the best producers in the world will agree with me on that.

I don't know how much of what you are doing is DAW-based, but there's a company called PAS that has good analyzers: http://www.audio-software.com/

I wonder if Pay-per-view might be interested in broadcasting one of these "mud-fest competitions" you speak of. I'd like to see that. :)
 
Shailat said:
Using that philosophy.....
explain to me how a acoustic guitar can sound great by itself yet will never cut through a mix, unless you cut it drasticly and change the sound to a degree that it sounds discusting by itself yet fits in like a glove to the mix........
If you want I'll give you some more examples.
Click to expand...

if this is true, what happens if the whole band stops in a song and there's just a little acoustic part with vocals? Are you going to tweak all the eq knobs of the acoustic guitar really quick?

If it sounds in your face by itself, it will sound in your face in the mix.
 
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