Vocal mixing, especially harmonies

  • Thread starter Thread starter jaja714
  • Start date Start date
J

jaja714

New member
Hi, I'm Jeff and I've been "mixing" in my home studio for a few months doing Beatle covers.

I've tried to keep things simple and I've had some luck. I'm at the point where I think I'm spending more time mixing than singing but I know that is how things are supposed to go. :)

I'm starting to notice that some tracks do not sound good on some speaker systems and/or at low volume. What I am noticing is that the vocals are not "blending" as nicely under these conditions while they sound much better with the headphones.

This is probably because I record with headphones to monitor and then I mix with headphones. The problem is that if I mix using speakers, then the mixes don't sound good on headphones.

Does anyone have any idea what I might be doing wrong and what I might do to correct?
 
Hey Jeff! Welcome to HR. Honestly its going to be difficult for anyone to give you advice on how to improve without hearing anything. Once you have 10 posts you should be able to post a link to your music int the MP3 mixing clinic.
 
Hi Jeff,
You have probably summed up some of the reasons people pay good money to mastering houses!

There are those that say you can never mix successfully on headphones. It is certainly true that speakers and cans are totally different acoustic "places". This can be demonstrated by the incredible spacial realism of dummy head recording which, AFAIK cannot be reproduced on speakers.

But even with speakers the home jockey mixes on nearfields but the end user might have large speakers in a vast room or listen on a Sainsburie's Red box in a 10' by 10' bedroom!

Then, genre is a factor. You are surely not going to mix Bach Concerti for buds??!!

I am sure The Men will tell me very sternly if I am wrong but my instinct is that you are best off to mix on the best monitor/room setup you can get and then let cans, cars and bedroom grotboxes fall where they may?

Just a thought. The Beatles probably were listened to 90% of the time in a bedroom, on a grotbox.'Twas called a Dansette Recordplayer. Fixed a miwyon of 'em!

Dave.
 
I will try to mix on speakers but, for now, I have your standard computer speakers. Any suggestions as to what I can buy from Amazon to replace these?
 
I'll second the recommendation to mix on monitors. I use to mix with headphones and had exactly the same experience as you -- it might sound okay on some speakers and some volumes, but not on others. Once I got some near-fields, I find my mixes are much more consistent across different listening environments.
 
You don't want to mix on the average computer speakers. Save up for some good monitors. Anything under $100 isn't going to cut it, but may give you a better starting point than headphones. Can you mix with a combination of headphones and cheap monitors? Yes, more-or-less. Listen to commercial CDs with a similar sound to what you want through the same systems and pay attention to how they sound, try to get your mix to match. Then burn a CD, go listen on your car system, your living room stereo, your friends bedroom stereo, etc. Make notes about what is wrong, remix, do it all again.
 
I think you will find on the board, mixing with external speakers (preferably monitors) in a treated room is always the best option. I don't have monitors, I don't have a treated room, but I do mix with external speakers. That will better assist your mixes sounding well on various systems.

I take my mixes and I run them through several environments, just for a check. But you will have to set your standard and let the mix fall where it falls.
 
I don't have a great room to mix in but I have some pretty decent tannoy monitors. I switch those off with my Sennheiser HD280's which I highly recommend. I got them of amazon for 65 refurbished. I definately agree that its good to listen on many systems. My bandmates and myself will listen to our music in all of our cars as a new perspective of the mix.
 
Hi Jeff.
A lot of solid advice here.

I thought I'd add something that might be relevant. I've noticed that if I'm using a stereo effect on vocals..say reverb or delay..
If I pan it as wide as it can go the vocal will lose focus on speakers, but the issue isn't as pronounced on headphones.

I think the main reason is that there's crosstalk with speakers. If you were deaf in one ear, you'd still hear the output of both speakers, whereas with headphones you'd only hear one side. See what I mean?

Anyway, if you have stereo effects on the vocal, try narrowing them in the stereo field to see what happens.

Other than that, I guess that your headphones and speakers are both misleading in their own way.
You either need a shedload of reference systems to find a great happy medium, or one good pair of monitors in a good environment so you can trust what you hear.

It's not easy....I know!
 
Burn a CD of your mix, and then listen to it on as many different devices as possible; earbuds, home stereo systems, tv speakers, in the car etc.

The more systems the better. Make notes about what you notice about the mix on each system, that varies from what you hear on your phones. Make small adjustments in the mix software and re-burn to another CD.

Rinse and repeat.
 
Ok, thanks to Guitar Center, I got a pair of M-Audio BX5 D2 for 30% ($100) off. Now that I'm mixing on external speakers but how best to blend the vocals?

I have the three vocal tracks normalized to -6db but I didn't normalize each track as a whole, I actually took the time to normalize each line of each verse. So, I'm actually normalizing "between breaths" if that makes any sense.

Now, I could normalize each word or syllable ... and that creates some great harmonic chords ... but the volume levels sound unnatural. So, I'll stick with normalizing each line.

That said, I am still not hearing completely blended vocals. I saw some mixing work done by a barbershop singer and he duplicated all of his vocal tracks and mixed them together as follows. For each of the four vocal tracks, Lead, Tenor, Bass, and Baritone, he mixed three versions of each, Solo (vocal track solo), Predominant (vocal track + remaining tracks at half volume), and Right (vocal track in the right ear and the remaining three in the left ear). so, that produced:

  1. Lead Solo
  2. Lead Predominant
  3. Lead Right
  4. Tenor Solo
  5. Tenor Predominant
  6. Tenor Right
  7. Baritone Solo
  8. Baritone Predominant
  9. Baritone Right
  10. Bass Solo
  11. Bass Predominant
  12. Bass Right


Does anyone have any experience with this or similar strategies?
 
jaja714 said:
I actually took the time to normalize each line of each verse. So, I'm actually normalizing "between breaths" if that makes any sense.

Now, I could normalize each word or syllable ... and that creates some great harmonic chords ... but the volume levels sound unnatural. So, I'll stick with normalizing each line.
Click to expand...

Whoa! That will sound unnatural; Of course it will.
I say go back to your raw track and use your ears to volume automate.

jaja714 said:
That said, I am still not hearing completely blended vocals. I saw some mixing work done by a barbershop singer and he duplicated all of his vocal tracks and mixed them together as follows.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't bother. Not yet, at least.
You should be able to get the sound you want out of one good vocal track.
Anything extra is just that.
 
Steenamaroo, you might be onto something w.r.t. crosstalk but I'm not quite sure I understand the cause and solution properly. Let me tell you what I did:

I recorded my vocals with a reverb setting on my mic using my Boss VE-20. I know I'm supposed to record dry but it's a pain applying reverb in Audacity. None of the plug-ins sound nearly as good. Further, applying reverb to a dry vocal takes a long time as it involves track duplication and then a lot of trial and error.

As far as your point regarding panning, I'm not sure what you mean when you say wide and narrowing. I have all three vocals centered. Is that what you mean by narrow?
 
Is there a sound you are going for? Also, I noticed in your sig you are using Audacity. I like Audacity but it is not a good mixing tool. So, that might be your problem. You should have a track for part, and blend the voices with volume control, not normalization.

If you are going to be doing this more often, I suggest looking into a proper DAW. I always recommend Reaper since it is inexpensive (free to try) and only $60 to buy. There are others that will do the job as well. But first and foremost, you need a better tool to mix.

Let me know if I don't understand something, but that is my first impression of the situation.
 
jaja714 said:
Steenamaroo, you might be onto something w.r.t. crosstalk but I'm not quite sure I understand the cause and solution properly. Let me tell you what I did:

I recorded my vocals with a reverb setting on my mic using my Boss VE-20. I know I'm supposed to record dry but it's a pain applying reverb in Audacity. None of the plug-ins sound nearly as good. Further, applying reverb to a dry vocal takes a long time as it involves track duplication and then a lot of trial and error.

As far as your point regarding panning, I'm not sure what you mean when you say wide and narrowing. I have all three vocals centered. Is that what you mean by narrow?
Click to expand...

Ok; I guessed you were using reverb in the DAW, so what I suggested doesn't really work. :p

Hmm.
I think a great starting point would be to download reaper.
Your description of reverb in audacity sounds OTT. It shouldn't be like that.

In reaper (and most daws) you can record dry then just insert a reverb plugin. You sit an adjust all the parameters and hear the results as you're doing it!
Much easier, plus you aren't committed.
 
I have found that getting up to speed on new software takes loads of time.
 
I am extremely adept in audacity when it comes to recording and mixing.
 
I've tried CuBase and cakewalk and I feel crippled not knowing how to do the simplest things.
 
Also, I don't want to re-record dozens and dozens of vocal parts for 30+ tracks.
 
I would prefer to stick with Audacity for my existing vocal tracks "as-is" for now because I am so, so close.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top