Clear, Bright and Powerful Vocals.

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Renflexx

New member
Hi guys, im watching a guy on Youtube named NateWantstoBattle, and he has some awesome mixing techniques not just with his vocals, but with the whole song in general.
I have a home studio and i record with a Apollo Twin Duo with the microphone TLM103 by Neumman and was hoping to get to his level of mixing. I currently use Waves and UAD plugins for this effect and have good results, still not excellent.
I'm a perfeccionist guy and i like everything perfect, so i was hoping that you could help me with this.
How do you think that this guys mixes? Like Compression, Eq's, Delays, etc?
I know for a fact that he records with a TLM103 like me and with a Focusrite Isa One Pre amp. But anyway thats all i know xD
Thanks for reading guys :333 :guitar:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9C19C6H9_Ug

Also i forgot to post here how my song is going, im gonna upload it here so you guys can hear it.
View attachment mix2.mp3
 
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Hi Renflexx, this isn't going to be the answer you're looking for but I'll give you an honest one. The biggest difference is vocal technique. Sorry man. His notes were on pitch. He was using his diaphragm and his enunciation was good. He probably actually could have used a better mic and imo, some of the flaws of the pairing showed in his mix. However, for what he's doing, his mix doesn't have to be delivered at a full production level. Aside from what he could have done better, the actual tone he produced with his voice what got his mix sounding as good as it did. If you're really trying to get to that level of mixing, you've got to get your own vocal stronger. Waaaay to much throat. And you missed a good many notes. If you're having a hard time hitting notes accurately, use an autotuner. They work wonders in a pinch.
 
But man his voice is full of autotune. You can hear that 10000 miles away. And i've heard him singing live and stuff and its not as good as it is when he records. Not nearly.
Thing is, he is a great producer for what he does. And my voice does not have autotune but it does have indeed Melodyne. ^^
 
Right on. I'm not knocking the production, and I do think he did a good job. Please don't get me wrong on that one.

I'll try and follow up tomorrow. At home on my laptop, I can't hear his mix well enough to start deconstructing the technique. I can probably throw some helpful pointers out there based on his mix technique, but I need to be infront of my SM9's to hear it accurately and in depth. The TLM103 is a great home studio mic by the way.

I think you're totally asking the right questions here though! I'll try and hit you back tomorrow.
 
Ah good. question. ...and I'm back in my studio by the way.

The first recording is wide as frickin heck, it's bright and detailed and clear, without ever getting brittle or overly sibilant. I know JJP mixed it, and that he ran her vocal through his Fairchild 660, but that in and of itself doesn't say much. Also, I have never had access to a what I'm guessing is probably a Lexicon 960. I can't tell what kind of processing if any was put not he reverb or what reverbs may have been stacked to get the tail to sit like it does.
 
Ok. I think that recording is using an all in 1 plugin. I hear an uncontrolled mess of mid lows in the 120-300 range, which tells me he probably did not use a multi band comp, or didn't know how to set it. The vocal is overly squashed in my opinion in the 6-9k range. That may be why he has some trouble with the sibilance, the s's and the t's. They distort. It may be a combination of his mic and his plugin, as the Neumans tend to lack control of the sibilance (they're still very good mics....don't take that wrong). But it's a Neuman flaw that you won't see in a U47, c800, a c12 or a Bottle...all mics with top notch construction of the capsules.

I'm not picking on him, i'm trying to disect the problems to identify what he might have actually done to his vocal chain. I'll note that nothing I can hear is a result of gain staging errors or a bad choice of preamp.

Part of the distortion issues which I'm hearing in the sibilance I think imply a saturation plugin. Perhaps an izotope or voxengo unit such as a voxformer. Whatever he used didn't allow him to control that 120-300 or he couldn't hear it in his monitors. Around 1:50, when the instruments drop out, listen to the specifically to the words "...life is so short...sung for..." and you can hear the S ping pong (first to the right, then to the left). I believe there is a high pass filter on the delay. The delay is set to 8th, assuming his DAW was set at 4/4 and not double timed. He should have hi-pass filtered or side chained a de-esser to the delay. I think he made another mistake here. What he did was the right idea, but I feel he could have executed the technique better.

There is an imaging plugin on this somewhere but I can't tell what it is. I don't know if he placed it, or it was included in his all-in-one plugs. You can use room verbs to create the sense of space, you can use mod stuff (like the sound toys microchip), you can use slaps, you can use tape emulators. You can also use track delay with mid-side processing (such as the Brainworks stereo maker) to do this. Also a common tactic on electric guitars. Either way, when you listen to that vocal it does not sit perfectly dry in the middle. I do like what he did with it, whatever it is.

Because of the overly aggressive compression here, I do not think he used parallel processing in the chain. I could be wrong, but I think he has a serial chain. I think the end of the song should have been automated better, as there are time when I feel the guitars and snare compete with the vocal more than they should. It also means the release times of his compressor may have been set too high. This guy may have stacked compressors.

What I think you're hearing that you really like (because it's also what I really like) is the glue. The vocal just sticks and bonds to the track. There's a sustain like gooey smoothness that saturates the vocal, yet allows detail and energy to permeate the song. That's why i think overall, despite a lot of mistakes, this song is well produced, well delivered, and overall sounds pretty dang good. This is a function of compression, though I think he could have gone easier.

Hope this helps.
 
jkuehlin said:
Ok. I think that recording is using an all in 1 plugin. I hear an uncontrolled mess of mid lows in the 120-300 range, which tells me he probably did not use a multi band comp, or didn't know how to set it. The vocal is overly squashed in my opinion in the 6-9k range. That may be why he has some trouble with the sibilance, the s's and the t's. They distort. It may be a combination of his mic and his plugin, as the Neumans tend to lack control of the sibilance (they're still very good mics....don't take that wrong). But it's a Neuman flaw that you won't see in a U47, c800, a c12 or a Bottle...all mics with top notch construction of the capsules.

I'm not picking on him, i'm trying to disect the problems to identify what he might have actually done to his vocal chain. I'll note that nothing I can hear is a result of gain staging errors or a bad choice of preamp.

Part of the distortion issues which I'm hearing in the sibilance I think imply a saturation plugin. Perhaps an izotope or voxengo unit such as a voxformer. Whatever he used didn't allow him to control that 120-300 or he couldn't hear it in his monitors. Around 1:50, when the instruments drop out, listen to the specifically to the words "...life is so short...sung for..." and you can hear the S ping pong (first to the right, then to the left). I believe there is a high pass filter on the delay. The delay is set to 8th, assuming his DAW was set at 4/4 and not double timed. He should have hi-pass filtered or side chained a de-esser to the delay. I think he made another mistake here. What he did was the right idea, but I feel he could have executed the technique better.

There is an imaging plugin on this somewhere but I can't tell what it is. I don't know if he placed it, or it was included in his all-in-one plugs. You can use room verbs to create the sense of space, you can use mod stuff (like the sound toys microchip), you can use slaps, you can use tape emulators. You can also use track delay with mid-side processing (such as the Brainworks stereo maker) to do this. Also a common tactic on electric guitars. Either way, when you listen to that vocal it does not sit perfectly dry in the middle. I do like what he did with it, whatever it is.

Because of the overly aggressive compression here, I do not think he used parallel processing in the chain. I could be wrong, but I think he has a serial chain. I think the end of the song should have been automated better, as there are time when I feel the guitars and snare compete with the vocal more than they should. It also means the release times of his compressor may have been set too high. This guy may have stacked compressors.

What I think you're hearing that you really like (because it's also what I really like) is the glue. The vocal just sticks and bonds to the track. There's a sustain like gooey smoothness that saturates the vocal, yet allows detail and energy to permeate the song. That's why i think overall, despite a lot of mistakes, this song is well produced, well delivered, and overall sounds pretty dang good. This is a function of compression, though I think he could have gone easier.

Hope this helps.
Click to expand...

Yes helps a lot, though its a little harsh when you're saying its a all in 1 plugin and here i am with Universal Audio and Waves plugins, lots of them trying to get to a similar result!!!! XD
 
Renflexx said:
Yes helps a lot, though its a little harsh when you're saying its a all in 1 plugin and here i am with Universal Audio and Waves plugins, lots of them trying to get to a similar result!!!! XD
Click to expand...

Ren, I was not aware that UA even makes an all-in-one. I'm referring to the CLA vox, or the Maserati Bass, or the Kramer Gtr, and so forth. The signature plugs. These are not bad plugs. I use them a lot. In my experience, they work, but they have to be a pretty perfect fit for the different sources. I love that they're easy to dial in (or sort of pre-dialed in). I hate that there are features that you can't control or disable beyond what they allow you to do with one knob or slider.
 
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