Skip to main content

How do you mix down the vocals to make them stand out of the track,.,.,..

do you do a soft pan on the doulbes and center the adlibs or vice versa..

Comments

anonymous Sun, 05/12/2002 - 21:56

I like to use a nice amount of compression to get the vocal to sit nice and clean on the beat. You might add a little top-end, or you might want it to sound dark and grimey???

As for backing vox, be creative. Sometimes on even a Dr. Dre produced song I'll hear the backing vox blended center with the lead (most of the time these days in his latest records). Other times there will be a "chorus" delay to give a "stereo spread" feel. Whatever sounds best for the song. If the instrumental beat is pretty centered in the mix, it might sound good to have some background/dub vocals spreading left right to fill the "stereo field". Even if the rapper dubbed a little "yea" or soundbyte...pan that left or right. It's cool to keep the little ad-libs a vocalist might do as he/she's prepping to drop their verse. Sometime's it's not. These are production decisions only you can make. If you want to know some techniques to bring your ideas into fruition, ask and the good people in here will respond.

anonymous Mon, 05/13/2002 - 22:20

Thanx man that's what i thought... Cause what i did was give the main 2 vocals a soft pan and kept the adlibs centered.. Not on all mixes that i do that i kind of mix to where it sounds the best... I just making sure i was going about it the right way far as goes of compression how do you set the vocal compression for rap vocals without giving it that rock and roll sound to it... Cause the main reason for me cause i did use compression on some stuff it sound like that we were ready to open up for a rock group.... Check out the first song on http://www.mp3.com/tmagik check out the songs and tell me how the mixes is and the overall quality/

Guest Tue, 05/14/2002 - 15:12

That would definitely by my first instinct as well. If it is truly an interactive duet lead with lots of cutting back and forth between voices (as opposed to just handing off from one verse to the next) I might pan the leads very slightly (no more than 11:00 - 1:00) to give a sense of spacial relationship between the lead voices.

anonymous Sat, 06/01/2002 - 07:46

If my entire mix is like a circle, then I want the lead vocal sitting powerfully right at the center or a little above. At the top of the circle I want my Hi-Hats sparkling, my higher freq pads that might "swirl" around on top of the mix. I want the attack on my kick drum sitting somwhere in the center as well so the vocal hits off of it. The bass stays locked at the bottom. My background vocal either stays center to blend with the power of the lead, or they get panned for "wider" effects. This panning depends upon how much "stuff" is already wide in the mix.