Denver Recording Studio

At CCM we record a lot of band projects and placement of the vocals is one of the most critical processes in creating a final mix. Place them too low and they will get masked by all the other instruments in the mix. Placing them to high will sound equally un-natural. First of start by making sure that your are making good use of panning with the rest of the band or ensemble so that there is a little space left down the center for the lead vocals to occupy. This avoids frequency build up, masking and a generally uninteresting mix. Next, lets now think about setting the volume of our mainvox. Here is a little gem of a tip I got from a great engineer named John Frissel, first set the vocals in the mix where your gut tells you is appropriate, then try gradually lowering the volume to zero, somewhere along the way should be a spot where all the other instruments drop out but the vocals. They will be faint but present, and all other instruments should be more or less not audible. This will let you know they are sitting on top without being too over bearing. Finally, experiment with reverbs and delays which will greatly affect how present the vocals are in the mix. For example, adding a very slight delay, say 15-35 milliseconds will make it sound much thicker like a doubled track, making the delay time a little longer, say 250-300 milliseconds will create a nice echo and can really help glue a mix together. As a generalization for this type of delay I start at 250 milliseconds and set the decay time and number of repeats very low then I tweak it until i get just what im after or until the client decides “hey thats the sweet spot”. After all the bottom line is weather or not the client is happy right.