mixing vocals

[ericlees]

no, i just worked as session artist...the arrangement was made by a teacher of mine named "yoca" and the mix by another teacher of mine called "hugo" both are from mexico.

[urokop]

A couple things. People have talked about de essing which is vital. The best way is to do it manually. Painstakingly go through and manually reduce the volume of each sibilant by about 5 dB. Doesn't really take that long. You also have to excite the track. Kenny Gioia has this covered in his set of wonderful ProTools tutorials. Google search Kenny Gioia vocal exciter and that one may be available for free. I'm taking it for granted you're already doubling the vocals. This means, copy it to a different track, separate them in time by about 15 to 20 msec and pan one hard right and the other hard left. For an even fatter vocal, you can detune one by about 7 or 8 cents using the on-board audio suite processor.

Mitch

www.soundclick.com/kopnick

[DJ Hellfire]

Originally Posted by urokop

A couple things. People have talked about de essing which is vital. The best way is to do it manually. Painstakingly go through and manually reduce the volume of each sibilant by about 5 dB. Doesn't really take that long. You also have to excite the track. Kenny Gioia has this covered in his set of wonderful ProTools tutorials. Google search Kenny Gioia vocal exciter and that one may be available for free. I'm taking it for granted you're already doubling the vocals. This means, copy it to a different track, separate them in time by about 15 to 20 msec and pan one hard right and the other hard left. For an even fatter vocal, you can detune one by about 7 or 8 cents using the on-board audio suite processor.

Mitch

www.soundclick.com/kopnick

Nice info!

[Julia B]

I found this to make a better de-esser than the one that comes with PT:

http://audio.tutsplus.com/articles/g...r-that-matter/

It's less ham-handed and more focused on the problem area.

[daeron80]

Originally Posted by Julia B

I found this to make a better de-esser than the one that comes with PT:

http://audio.tutsplus.com/articles/g...r-that-matter/

It's less ham-handed and more focused on the problem area.

Yeah, it's better than the Dyn3 De-esser. But it's really just a complicated way of doing what most de-esser plug-ins do for you. A good de-esser has exactly the signal chain outlined in that article inside it. Massey's does the job brilliantly. So does the free VST Spitfish. Waves' de-esser, too. Even Digi's old one does that, and does it better than the Dyn3 one, IMO.

Ssssssome ssssssingersssss are ssssso bad with their sssssssses that you have to deal with their tracks manually. But the majority can be handled with a good de-esser plugin a lot faster with just as good a result.

And please, don't double, excite, compress, de-ess, or even EQ a vocal just because somebody says it's the thing to do. Always listen and do whatever makes it sound better. If you're listening, you'll do something different to every vocalist, and probably even to every song.

[Julia B]

Originally Posted by daeron80

Yeah, it's better than the Dyn3 De-esser. But it's really just a complicated way of doing what most de-esser plug-ins do for you. A good de-esser has exactly the signal chain outlined in that article inside it. Massey's does the job brilliantly. So does the free VST Spitfish. Waves' de-esser, too. Even Digi's old one does that, and does it better than the Dyn3 one, IMO.

Ssssssome ssssssingersssss are ssssso bad with their sssssssses that you have to deal with their tracks manually. But the majority can be handled with a good de-esser plugin a lot faster with just as good a result.

And please, don't double, excite, compress, de-ess, or even EQ a vocal just because somebody says it's the thing to do. Always listen and do whatever makes it sound better. If you're listening, you'll do something different to every vocalist, and probably even to every song.

My perssssssonal vocal tracksssssss are sssssssso bad with the essssezssss I had to do this manually -- my worst frequency is at 9.1 kHz. That's where the sssssss really peaks out. This lesson was a godsend. It's free. The Dyn3 was horrid because it completely mashes out the ssss altogether and I do like a sssome, but just not the excesssssssssss. I have the Massey, but ... see I still have the demo, lol, and need to pay so it remembers the settings and I can make presets.

Totally agree about the doubling, exciting, compressing, whatever. This will depend upon the individual, the genre, the mood of the music, and stuff like that. And don't get me going on autotune. It's a don't overuse me plugin. But sometimes a take is good except for a couple glitches where I like to take a more surgical approach to pitch fixing, and Melodyne Editor seems to be better, but doing a global setting with the sliders has been real tedious and I haven't tried it since the last update -- it used to take forever for those sliders to adjust. I hope they fixed it.

It's real difficult to be objective when you're both the artist and engineer, as is my case. However, my downfall is that I tend to be hypercritical of my own work -- damned classical music training.

Adding "air" on my own, because of the ssssssss issue I have to be real careful about how I set the high freq EQ shelf because I don't want it overlapping where I'm doing the de-essing.

[daeron80]

Originally Posted by Julia B

It's real difficult to be objective when you're both the artist and engineer, as is my case. However, my downfall is that I tend to be hypercritical of my own work -- damned classical music training.

I know that feeling all too well. I'm also classically trained and sometimes do my own one-man-band projects. It can be hell getting objective.

I think you can probably add all the air you need, and just pull down the sibilants correspondingly. I.e., you decide you need another 1.5 dB of high end boost, pull down all your sibilants 1.5 dB. A real pain if it's automated by hand, though. Probably best to put up with the sharp pokes in the ear until you've got your sound and then de-ess.

[Julia B]

Probably best to do the compression and EQ and all that other stuff, then record it to a new track via bus and do the de-essing on that one, then.

[cdavis6406]

De-ess first common knowledge. The essing going on is triggering the compression when the actual voice should. It takes up a lot of headroom right at the moment the compressor needs to to be addressing the transient of the vocal, but will be catching the transient from the sylibant or plossive instead.

Look De-ess the crap out of it. When it starts making the vocals sound like their lisping start dialing it back then and listen. When it sounds good print it to a cpy playlist.

Then EQ it. De-essing will inevitably reduce some highs, 4 to 6k and up, you have to eq that back in most times. So Then Eq the rest of the vocals to taste or not if it is an awesome take.

Now that the vocals are cleaned and eq'd your left with a good sounding track , compress.

Now the compressor can do exactly what you want, deal with clean transients only. The compressor won't have to deal with essing spikes or unwanted freq's like low mud or low mid woof. Efficient.

Sylibants and Plossives are mostly garbage, so dont use your plugin or cpu power dealing with it get rid of it.

This is a broad sort of generalized way of dealing with this sort of thing. Different variants and methods sometimes apply or sound better. But most here will agree, get rid of the essing on your tracks first. Other wise youll end up eq-ing and compressing again or going back and changing some things with them if you de-ess last.

Have fun you guys

[Julia B]

I tried that Massey de-esser and got the dreaded DAE 7054 error....again.

Hah! Me? An awesome take? lol