How do you get the most out of vocals ?

[gainreduction]

Hello, welcome and thanx for doing this. thumbsup

Do you have any special takes on how to get the vocals really convincing ? Of course you sometimes get tracks where just pulling up the fader is enough but surely you sometimes might get pretty poor vocal tracks, poorly performed and/or tracked. What's your first-aid to a bad vocal track to make it sound better than it actually is ? Or why not what you do to a great vocal ?!

[Michael Brauer]

Some of you on this forum are just starting your career and others are seasoned pros or dreaming to be one. Forgive me if I seem to answer in simple terms sometimes but I don’t want to leave anyone behind ok?

Focus on the singer, not the band. Seems obvious but it isn’t that simple. The more you focus on making everything heard, the less the listener can stay focused on the singer. Anytime, your mind starts wandering unintentionally to something other than the singer, you’ve lost the message and the mix. Take whatever distracted you and turn it down or turn it off. It’s not just about what toys I put on the vocal, it’s about how I keep your attention to the story being sung. Having access to all my greatest toys and compressors will not do you any good if the listener’s attention is diverted to how cool the bass is in the middle of a passionate cry for a lost love.

The rule of my thumb, and other’s through out the history of great songs that are embedded in you mind, is there’s never more than two or three things coming at you at any one time. Think of your favorite song and ask yourself what instrument was playing along with the singer. It’ll be the singer plus one or two things, tops. If nobody’s crowding the singer, it makes it easier to get the message across. The production on those classic songs are great because they compliment the singer and bring out the message. The words and melody are simple to follow from the first bar to the last. I, as a mixer, like to take the listener’s hand and guide it from beginning to end. I want to make the experience of listening to the song an easy and memorable one.

Now if all the above suggestions are in place, and the singer needs help, there are tricks to help him/her. There is software available to change the timbre, phrasing, tone and anything else alienistic. But that’s for a producer to address.

For me, depending on the feeling you’re trying to get, you can have them change attitude or sound more urgent, stronger, sadder, lonely, angrier, vulnerable, mean, nasty and my favorite, phoning the part attitude. More urgent and intense? Use an 1176 and put all the ratios in and have that meter smashing to the left. Stronger? Send the vocal to a few different sounding compressors returning on faders and combine to make it tougher. Sadder? Ride the vocal to pop out a bit more were the emotion is strongest and stay away from reverbs. Lonely? Find a plate that sounds a bit hollow, along with different single delays or multi head delays until you get a haunting feel. Angrier? Add a lightly amped vocal to the original and eq it so that only the part of the mids poke out to help the emotion. Vulnerable? Hire chris martin. Mean, nasty? Send the vocal to a sansamp and play with it until it gets gritty to distorted. Phoning it in? Find a phone patch in the millions of boxes out there. Of course you understand these are all just starting points to get you going in some familiar direction, and you’ll get better at it as the hundreds of hours click by.

Yes, I also use pitch correction software when the vocal needs it.

[Jorg]

Very Interesting!!!
I had a masterclass with Glynn Johns last year and he said exactly the same about keeping the focus on the voice!!

I then wrote my final dissertation about Auditory Stream Analysis which discusses the audio streaming process in our brain:

Long Story short: The outcome of my dissertation was exactly the same thing u said:

The human brain can max. listen to 5 things at a time without getting confused.
However 3 is ideal! Then u won't have to pay attention to the music, because your brain sorts it automatically.


Its good to hear that its not just theory and science, but that there are actually professional engineers out there who are aware of this and mix with this knowledge!

[cgarges]

Clap clap clap clap clap clap clap!!!!!!!!

Thanks again for being here, Michael.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[krs]

Originally Posted by Michael Brauer

Yes, I also use pitch correction software when the vocal needs it.

Yes but I loved the way you left it alone on the new Ben Folds disc. (FWIW I disliked the use of autotune on "Rocking the Suburbs", don't have the album handy, hope you weren't involved in that )

Beautiful work on Silverman, it sounds brilliant.

Carry on

[gainreduction]

Great reply, thanks for sharing !