Here's my second Mix Breakdown. This time I'll be concentrating on vocal treatment. Welcome on board!
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| Air Enough to Breathe by Port Streets |
I'm a bit late with this weeks blog, but my baby girl had her birthday, which we celebrated with family and relatives. Therefore I decided to give myself some slack, and this time not even complain about the lack of time. Be sure to read on as I reveal my secrets!
The song was again from the Dueling Mixes. It's a nice jazzy tune with great lyrics. You can check my mix below.
I'll be going through my mix of the main female vocal. It was made out of four separate tracks, for which I created a "master vox"-folder to stack them all together to handle them as a single track. There was a single "whoa!" on one of the tracks (at 3:53) which I moved in to its own track. I created that track just for an easy volume hike to bring the shout up in the mix.
The mixing process started with the static mix (adjusting the volume faders to a suitable position in each of the tracks).
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| Vox master folder and the static mix |
The picture above actually tells a little lie. I added volume automation (to bring up the kids shout at 4:14) to the two first tracks, so the faders should actually be at about -8dB for majority of the song. I placed a picture of the tracks below, so you can see how the vocal master track is formed. I also added automation to the master vocal volume to fit it nicely to the different parts in the song. This automation can also be seen from the picture. (Volume automation means that the tracks volume is changed as the song progresses. You can see the volume changes from the green envelope below the automated track).
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| Vocal tracks - Click to enlarge! |
To reduce my (and processor) workload, all effects were placed to the master vocal track. These were: REDD17 console emulation, CLA-2A compressor, ReaEQ equalization and Clarisonix plugin.
The console emulation is a standard effect in my mixes for almost all tracks (master folders). I adjusted the console EQ and drive to taste. This usually means pushing the highs to a sweet spot and running the drive up until the signal starts to slightly break up - and then pulling it back somewhat.
Compressor was added to even out the biggest differences and jumps on the volume. CLA-2A is also a standard effect I use in my vocal compressing.
Reapers own equalization plugin ReaEQ was used to cut the extra lows and brighten the vox up by pushing the highs up. I did a boost at around 1.5kHz (to add presence perhaps?) and a cut at 500Hz (can't really remember why. Maybe removed some muddiness, or maybe it was interfering with something?).
Vocal was finalised with the Clarisonix plugin that I have started also using in almost all lead vocals I stumble upon. Usually just slightly increasing the knobs until the vocals fall in place. I think this plugin is intended for bass, but I just love what it does with vocals. You can check out my effect settings below.
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| Vocal effects |
As a final touch I sent the master vox -signal also to a reverb channel with IK Multimedias CSR Room reverb. That's it. Nothing special here, but I wanted to write this up, as this is currently my standard method of handling vocals. Settings can of course change, but the basic approach is this. I hope you enjoyed checking this out. Keep on mixing!
Please leave a comment, maybe even suggest a topic for the next breakdown?
Check out my other mix breakdowns at:
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