How to Mix a Smooth Lead Vocal - Mastering: How to make a song louder in mastering - and the price you pay

How to Mix a Smooth Lead Vocal


[music]
Greetings. My name is Ian Vargo, and I'm with
theproaudiofiles.com. And
today, I'm going to be showing you how to
mix a smooth sounding vocal.
I'm going to be using the song, "The Stone"
by the band Goose and Fox.
Please allow me to preface with the fact that
this song is really well
written. The lead singer has a beautiful voice.
It was recorded in a great
studio with great microphones and equipment,
by really great engineers. As
a mix engineer, that will make your life a
lot easier. Sometimes as mix
engineers, we receive things that were recorded
in a bedroom. Maybe the
lead singer shouldn't be a lead singer. Poor
microphone technique. Could be
anything. But in this case, every link in
the chain was really good. And
that helped me a lot.
Regardless, we have a pretty dense arrangement.
A lot of tracks, you can
see. It took a good amount of work to get
the vocal to sit right. I'll show
you how we did that.
So, I'm going to play the final mix with all
of my effects on the lead
vocal right here, engaged.
[music]
Let's fast forward to a more dynamic part
of the vocal performance.
[music]
All right. So, let's mute that and any effects
on that vocal, and play the
raw vocal in context. You're going to hear,
especially at the louder parts
of the performance, it's a little bit harsh,
and it doesn't sit quite
right.
[music]
So, I started with compression. I don't always
start with compression on
the lead vocal. There are different schools
of thought, but in this
particular case, since the lead vocal was
a little bit harsh and needed
some taming, I used the CLA-2A. As you can
see, we've got a good amount of
compression here.
[music]
So, there's compression throughout, but especially
on the latter parts of
the performance. After that, I used the EQ-3,
which I think is really great
for subtractive EQ. Works really well because
it allows you, if you hold
down Shift Control to solo a band. That allows
you to find unmusical and
unwanted frequencies really quickly. Let me
show you how I work. Some
engineers will say, "Never solo anything."
I'm not one of those engineers.
[music]
So, 425.
[music]
851. That's a pretty harsh frequency.
[music]
1400. And then lastly, a little bit above
5 kHz, I wasn't liking too much.
Every song is going to be different, but this
plugin helps a lot and of
course, get rid of... Most of the time, you're
going to want to get rid of
these sub-y low frequencies that don't add
much.
After that, this wonderful plugin, called
The Decapitator, I use for
distortion. Not distortion in the way that
you would think, but more to
just help it sit in the context of the mix.
You can get pretty crazy with
this plugin if you turn up the wetness.
[music]
In this instance, I did not want that.
[music]
So, it's mostly the dry signal, but it helps
pull forward the vocal a
little bit and lets it sit better. After that,
this API compressor is
really great. I've got a pretty fast attack
and relatively slow release.
It's just a general compression throughout,
about 3 dB.
[music]
A little bit more on the louder parts. After
that, to add some air, I
always use, not always, but most of the time,
the API 560, because I find
that the 16 kHz is excellent. Let's take a
listen.
[music]
So, don't go overboard with this plugin, but
I find cutting a little bit of
mids and adding some 16 kHz really helps with
air.
After that, because I have so much compression
and EQ and stuff going on, I
find that de-S-ing is really important. I
like this de-esser right here.
Sometimes, I also manually de-S by bringing
down the volume automation. But
in this case, just this regular de-esser with
a range of -1.4 dB.
[music]
So, once again, let's go back a little bit
and find how the vocal sounds
raw.
[music]
Then after all of these effects.
[music]
Now, these effects that I've used, I will
never use the same signal chain
twice. Probably, you can go through every
session I've ever worked on, and
you're not going to see these exact settings
right here and these
particular effects in this order. It's all
about the song and finding what
the lead vocal needs to get the story across.
In this case, it just ended
up being these particular plugins.
If you have any questions, make sure to email
me at ianvargo[at]gmail.com.
Once again, this is Ian Vargo, with theproaudiofiles.com.
Make sure to
check out Goose and Fox on iTunes and Soundcloud.
Thank you.
[music]


Mastering: How to make a song louder in mastering - and the price you pay


Hello, my name is Ian Shepherd, I'm a mastering
engineer and producer,
and I run a website called Production Advice.
This video is to answer a question that came
in from a guy called Brendan, who
has read my eBook on mastering with multi-band
compression, which I released recently
And he's trying to use the guidelines in there
to match the sound of a track that he's working
on with a commercial release
- and he's finding it tricky.
Specifically he says: "It's a commercial club
track which is being played by DJs at the
moment.
I know it's extremely 'hot', the RMS gets
up to -3dBFS and has a dynamic range of 2.7
So I know that this is ridiculously over compressed,
however the drums sound nice and clear and
punchy.
all the bass is nice and present and it has
a great energy.
Even if I compress my mix to these levels
it just lacks that 'in-your-face' attitude
Is there something I'm missing?"
So, let's start by taking a listen to the
track that Brendan is working on...
And then let's listen to the commercial release
he's talking about.
Ok, so the first thing you notice is "Wow,
yes, it's a lot louder"
But the next thing I want to say is that:
I've got three parts of my answer to Brendan's
question.
The first thing I want to say is that doesn't
sound clean to me.
There is so much high frequency energy going
on with all of those synths in there,
that the distortion that's there in the kick
and the snare especially, is mostly hidden.
But if we listen to that snare fill just at
the end here somewhere...
...that's heavily distorted.
And the kick drum in general -
if you solo-ed out the kick drum in that track,
I pretty much guarantee there will be a real
kind of fuzzy, crunchy analogue distortion
over that
...but...
It doesn't sound disastrously bad, and if
your goal is to get tracks that loud,
that's what you want to do.
So, let's look at this in a bit more detail
The first thing I noticed when I turned the
commercial track down,
to get a fairer comparison between the gains,
is the difference in the EQ.
So I've turned that track down by about 3
dBs, let's listen to that.
So they both have a similar RMS level,
over here now - that's the thicker green bars
on the outside of the dynamic range meter.
And now that the loudness difference isn't
such a big factor, I think you can hear
that there is a lot more top in the commercial
release track.
So let's try putting some EQ in, to make Brendan's
track sound more like that.
I'm going to try a low shelf to reduce the
EQ so we don't push his up into clipping.
Those sound a bit closer now, and the first
thing I notice is that
I can actually turn Brendan's track up slightly,
because reducing that bass has taken away
from the apparent level of the song.
So let's increase the gain on there a little
bit.
Let's try 3 dBs...
They are already closer but that's clipping
a little bit,
so I'm going to put in a limiter on the output
here,
just to stop any clipping distortion.
There is more thump in the bass on the commercial
track so I'm going
to try and lift out the kick drum a little
bit on Brendan's track.
So that was sounding a bit closer there.
Now let's turn the commercial track back up,
and put in another 3dBs on Brendan's track
to get up it to that kind of commercial release
level.
Now, I'm saying commercial release level - that's
the commercial release level for this song.
In my opinion, it's WAY too loud.
It would sound much better if the levels were
lower down, closer to what Brendan is doing.
Because when it gets played out in the world
on the radio, on an MP3 player, on somebody's
Hi-Fi,
the levels are going to be even and the more
dynamic track is going to sound better.
But this is all about asking the question
of how we get those high levels.
So, let's try this now.
Now Brendan's track has a dynamic range that's
less than the release track,
but it still doesn't have quite the same bite,
quite the same edge
I think part of that is that the limiter is
softening what's happening a bit,
so I'm going to switch on some multi-band
compression.
- And one thing I should say is, Brendan's
question was based on using the guidelines
that I have in my eBook.
Those are aimed at my goal in mastering which
is transparency,
which is processing that you can't hear, the
song just sounds better.
We can't use those restrained settings if
this kind of loudness is our goal.
So I've cranked the ratios up to 4:1 on the
multi-band here,
I've raised the threshold and I'm pushing
the level on this much harder so let's see
how that sounds.
So, that sounds a bit better, there's a little
bit more thump in the kick there,
and I can see a little bit more dynamic range
over here.
It still doesn't quite have that bite and
that attack that the commercially released
tune has,
and one reason for that is that there is some
distortion in there.
The version I've got now of Brendan's track
is still quite clean,
and if you want that kind of edge, that really
aggressive, in-your-face sound,
then actually a little bit of distortion is
going to help you out.
So I'm going to use the saturation setting
on the MDynamics limiter that I'm using.
I'm going to try just affecting the top 3dBs
of the signal...
Let's wind that in and see how it sounds.
It's kind of subtle but I think you can start
to hear some of that gritty edge coming into
the claps,
and the bottom end of the kick drum.
Now let's try to comparing those two again
and see how we are doing.
So that's a lot closer.
Let's just remind ourselves how the track
sounded before...
Here it is again with the processing...
And it might be interesting to actually look
at the frequency response differences between
those two -
Here is the original...
You can see there is lot more low bass energy
in that.
The high frequencies and upper mids are cutting
through much more there.
Now the question is, SHOULD we do that much
processing
to this original tune to get it to sound like
this one ?
If that's your goal, that's what you should
do !
I feel there are too many compromises,
we've added too much distortion to this,
we've taken away too much of the dynamic range
-
and let's just let the commercial tune run
for a little bit...
It goes even further.
It goes beyond what we've done for Brendan's
track.
And that brings me on to the final idea that
I want to talk about in this video,
which is - it's not an idea that I've invented,
but it's very useful concept to think about
-
and that is, 'loudness potential'.
If you want to make a track really loud, you
need to set out with that goal in mind
and carry it all the way through the production
process.
This tune here sounds so loud BECAUSE it has
those distorted kick and snare parts,
BECAUSE it has all that high frequency content
in those synth sounds, those sustained synth
lines.
The key point I'm saying is that the commercially
released track that we've been looking at
here,
has far more potential to sound loud than
the original song that Brendan has.
And you need to bear that in mind when you're
deciding how you're going to process a tune,
and what it should sound like.
So there you go, I hope that was interesting,
let's just recap the points I made there:
The first thing that needed adjusting on that
track was the EQ balance - you need a balanced
EQ going in.
The next point was you need to get rid of
those tasteful 'rules of thumb' that I often
suggest.
You need more aggressive compression ratios,
higher thresholds, more limiting
and bring in, probably, some kind of soft
clipping or saturation type effect
to help keep that punch because pure limiting
will just soften the impact of the beats too
much.
And then finally you need to consider the
'loudness potential' of the song you are working
on.
A really musically dense track like that commercial
release has great loudness potential,
something more sparse and open like the track
that Brendan was working on, maybe not,
maybe it's not appropriate.
And finally, I would say again, both of these
versions when they came out on radio,
on MP3 player, on somebody's CD player, will
be played at the same volume.
And therefore the more dynamic track will
sound better.
I'll add some links in the post underneath
this video if you're interested in finding
out more about that concept,
because it's actually an opportunity for you
to take advantage of the loudness wars:
master your songs with more dynamics,
and get them sounding better than commercial
releases that have been pushed really hard
like this one.
Ok, thanks for watching, my name is Ian Shepherd.
Come over to www.productionadvice.co.uk and
have a look
at some of the other information I've got
there for you.