Which stage does this come into play?

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NickSpringfield

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I've been doing this for a few years, pretty half-assed I must say. It used to be that I just wanted something to say it was mine. I would make an instumental real quick with no real mixing besides volume and panning and just add my vocals with some basic settings and that was it. My friends liked it because they can't tell the difference between good production and crap.

But now, I'm much more interested in taking the time to really sclupt something from my mixes. I've been listening to a wide veriety of music and I have some general questions.

Basically when I listen to a pro mix, the vocals are very clear, up front of the mix and kind of transparent if thats the word for it. It has its own space but dominates the space as well. No harshness to it. My mixes are the opposite, obviously, and the vocals, although clear, stand firm on their ground in the mix, but they are only in one place and kinda rough. I tried doubling, tripling and quadrupling tracks and added different eq's and effects and panned them in all different directions, but it just sounds like chaos. I do use compression (not very well) and my mic isnt that good and the room I record vocals in is shit as well at the pre-amp. I KNOW this is why my results are so bad and I'm not asking for tips, for I have many books to read as it is, but my questions is:

Does the spacial aspect that I'm trying to explain occur primarilly in the tracking stage, mixing stage or mastering stage. Obvious answer is all three, and the crap in=crap out theory is true I know, but is there anything off the top of your heads that I can do to help? A new pre-amp and soundcard are calling me from afar, but besides that?

Sorry this is so long, my bad.

-Springfield
 
it sounds like you need to work on the EQing at the mixing stage.

carve out a space for the vocals and carve them out so they don't step on everything else.

try the all too often said trick of using a TON of compression on them and sliding the volume up on them under an uncompressed vocal track. that helps get good volume out of them without having to crank them as loud.

but more importantly.. EQ them right. read some articles.. i'm not confident in giving out an all encompassing how to guide on EQing vocals.

making stuff fit into its proper sonic space is usually done at the mixing stage.. it would be great if we could all track everything to where it always fit just right at the start but that would be kinda tough.. and mastering a song to bring out clarity in individual instruments isn't too likely if the clarity isn't already there from proper mixing.

hope this answers it for you.
 
Thanks. I already do compress the main vocal and leave the others uncompressed and move them to either side. This does help, but not to the extent I'd like.

I appreciate you taking the time out to reply. I'll have to re-read some engineering books I bought but never properly understood them.

-Springfield
 
The one thing that I didn't hear you mention is the use of delays. A very important aspect of creating a spacial image for vox (as well as other intruments).
 
NickSpringfield said:
Explain further please...

-Springfield
Click to expand...

Most folks new to audio engineering think of sound as simply left to right, which is natural considering you're dealing with 2 speaker positioned that way. In order to create the illusion that sound is coming front to back however you need to "trick" the ear by using delays, reverb, EQ, and volume. For example you can make a vocal "stand out" from the other parts of the mix by using a bit of short delays, for example try 10-15ms. These are short "early reflection" type of delays that give the illusion the the source is close. On the other hand lengthening the delay, adding more of the "wet" signal versus dry, and starting to add elements of reverbation, along with rolling off a bit of high end, start to make the source sound more distant and as if it was coming from the back.

This is a big topic that I can't summarize in a short thread, but hopefully this gives you some food for thought.
 
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