Any tips on mixing Vox with 2 track Instrumentals

[Creative Apathy]

Most if not all of the cats that record at my spot bring in the 2 tracked beat and lay vocals on top of them. I know this is pretty common in the mixtape era, but is there any process that you guys go through when dealing with this situation? I know it's nearly impossible to get a GREAT mix out of this circumstance but I would love to hear how you guys approach this and find a way for the vocals to sit better. In rare instances (usually over industry beats) I can get the vocals to sound very nice and sit in a pocket, but that varies from beat to beat.

Just curious as to what anyone else does..

[chris carter]

Every once in a blue moon I'll have to do something with an 2track instrumental and the thing that makes it difficult is the buss compression that already exists on it. Here's what I do in those situations. Buss all your vocal tracks down to a stereo buss so now you have essentially two busses, one of the vox and one of the instrumental. Put a compressor on the vocal buss and set it how you would set it for compressing your 2buss, but key the compressor from the instrumental. Make sense? Then if it's not quite breathing right, but a compressor with a slow attack (ie. greater than 20ms) and medium release (ie. around 250ms or something, flavor to taste) on the instrumental and key that from the vocals but set the threshold so it's just barely kicking in. That usually gives you the push pull that you need to make it sound like normal 2buss compression.... or as close as you can get in a screwed up situation.

That said, this only comes up for goofy things like a mash-up for myspace or something non-important. If it's actually for a record for release, I would tell them to go back and track out the beat.

Hope that helps.

[Creative Apathy]

Hey man...that's seems like some awesome advice man...I'm gonna try in tomorrows session to see how it works...

Most of the guys I work with are just putting out their own mixtapes etc...but if its an original beat of course I always try to encourage them to supply a tracked out version of the beat.. 2 tracks are just so messy, especially when some of the beats have the worst possible mix ever

Anyhow, thanks for the in depth reply can't wait to test it out

[mattssons]

I would (among other tweaks) just make sure to cutaway room for the vox frequencies in the instrumental track so it can be nice and loud and still have distinct/clear vocals and not have that "vox above music" scenario. /Toby

[jgrif08]

Originally Posted by mattssons

I would (among other tweaks) just make sure to cutaway room for the vox frequencies in the instrumental track so it can be nice and loud and still have distinct/clear vocals and not have that "vox above music" scenario. /Toby

Not to steal the thread but...

when people refer to carving out a space for the vocals using EQ it makes me wonder about songs with a handful of different MC's. If you're actively using subractive EQ to 'carve a pocket' for, say, two different MC's that have completely different voices do you actually automate your EQ?

I've never tried it, but it just seems that that could get a little distracting throughout the course of song with say 5 different MC's...

[Top40Music]

Hey Buddy I'm glad You are helping Those that want to
Record themselves on to a CD .
This is what I do for my clients in Riverdale G.A . after work .
I always tell my clients to bring a comercial release CD that they want their song to compete with to the session . When they arrive I Load their Track onto DP5
and the comercial release CD onto ITunes .
After tracking Their 2 Track Beat to a click track I work on getting their beat to sound as Loud , crisp , Knocking and Bangin as possible . After the clients hear the shootoff between their beat and the Comercial Release CD the clients knows they came to the right place and have the right guy working to make them RICH . Buddy after you record their Rap and put in the pocket you'll be putting your clients money in your Pocket . Have fun Man .

[mattssons]

I usually just dip a bit where the vox lives, sometimes by looking a bit at a spectrum analyser or just sweeping a boosted parametric slowly until the vox peaks out, i would´nt have different cuts for different mc´s.

Cool idea thought as it could be one way to keep the songs interesting, i think i read Spike Sent talk about different e.q in different parts of a song. Movement, dynamic suprises, different fx could be other ways.

I think low and highpass filters are useful when mixing as having every sound fullrange is just wasting bandwidth, especially really subsonic stuff. /Toby

[OneUp Ent]

I find that "ducking" a little bit in the 2.5k range on the inst track does the trick in most situations like that.

[Stitch333]

try running a parallel comp bus off the two track and then hi and lo shelf on that comp bus... and comp the 2mix (I always insert a hardware 2mix comp on the master). this, with eqing (as suggested above), temp delay and verb on vocs + voc comp and eq on voc bus, can help glue it all together.

[Creative Apathy]

you guys are the dookie...the eq ducking works pretty well it makes things alot better ..still havent tried the compression idea but i want to asap

thanks for the help!

[chris carter]

I would avoid EQing or frequency ducking on the instrumental to make room for the vocal UNLESS there is something WRONG with the instrumental. There should already be room for the vocal in the arrangement.

[Mudnoc]

My biggest problem with the 2-track thing is when clients bring in beats they got from some producer and the track is squashed to hell....basically leaving no headroom for the vocals....It never fails, I load up the track and it's one complete block... Extremely hard to work with....

[Creative Apathy]

well if it's industry instrumental it has a good enough pocket already, but SOMEtimes ducking works for me on a funky mp3 ( yall know what i mean...some of these industry instrumentals are downloaded from god knows where and obviously sound very low quality- like freakin 48)

but if its original it takes much more work of course we all know that. i hate it...i hate it i hate it i hate it. i mean sometimes the mix is so bad i just want to pee on the 2 track...but if thats the case i will try my hardest to convince the artist to acquire a tracked out version by any means necessary...malcolm x