Hi Marcus, welcome to RO.

The vocal sounds off key. You may wish to try a pitch correction plug-in like Izotopes' Nectar 2 or similar...you can bring the vocals up to the correct pitch by snapping them to scale, but try not to overdo it.

I think you need a little more air on the master bus...try an EQ and add a little around 1ok.

Personally, I would like it to sound a little more up tempo as well...sounds a little on the slow side to me.

These are just my thoughts and are subjective to what I think this needs. Others here may wish to advise and give you their thoughts which may differ.

Thank you, Sean! I appreciate you taking the time. The handout is super helpful, and I'll try the eq 10k on the master buss tonight. I'll also take another look at the vocals. I do have Nectar 2, so I'll try snapping it to scale as you suggested. Do you sometimes change the tempo in the mix stage? I know it can be done in Reaper using Elastic Audio but I've never done in before in a mix.

Best

Marcus

No worries Marcus, with Nectar 2 go into the Pitch Editor, you will need to actually record the part you want to edit in Nectar, so apply the plug-in to the vocal track like you would any plug-in, then record the vocal track into Nectar 2 by pressing play in your DAW then hit the red record button in Nectar to record the vocal part in real time. Once you have it recorded you will see there is a pull down bar titled Chromatic, below that you can see a button that reads Snap To Scale...hit that and it should pull the vocal to scale.

You can adjust the correction strength and correction speed of the pitch editor to taste if you wish, generally the default setting is usually sufficient. Play through the track once you have done the above and preview how it sounds.
Once you get it how you want it the plug-in either has to remain on the track or you can print the track then import it back into your DAW.

As for changing the tempo, you want to do this without changing the pitch. I'm not really that familiar with Elastic Audio but I know you can do this with Audacity (which is free to download).

Personally, I would try it on a finished printed track of the mix, not on the mix itself...again to taste.

Hope this helps.

- Sean.

Speaking of vocal pitch correction, this popped into my inbox overnight from Waves.

Haven't checked it out apart from this video.