Tips on Setting Vocals in Your Mix

Placing Vocals in a mix can be tricky. At times, the most subtle changes seem to make a huge difference. If the vocals are set too low they can get lost and washed out in the music. If they are too loud they end up killing the listeners ears when playing the music at full volume. So, what’s the middle ground? The first important step is to evaluate the role of your vocal. Is it a lead, a back-up, a bussed group of vocals…? Understanding the genre you are mixing for and finding the vocals role in the piece will dictate all of your decisions in volume, panning, spread, equalization, etc. Once I have tastefully EQed, compressed, and otherwise tailored the vocals to my liking, I bus the vocals to a single aux track and make any final tailorings to the vocals as a group. It is important to search for and carve out peaky and gross frequency problems. I also tend to use a little compression to glue the vocals together a bit more. Once this is done, I bring the monitor volume very low and drop the vocals bus volume to zero. Now that the entire song is barely audible, I will slowly bring the vocal bus up in volume. I typically place the lead vocal slightly above the snare to sit on top of the mix, or alongside the snare for a more musical emphasis. After setting the vocals at a very low monitor level, I will turn the monitors very loud to make sure the vocals are not over-powering when someone is blasting it in their stereo. I will then give a final listen from at least 15 feet away to see how the entire mix is working together – particularly the vocals balancing with the lead melody and bass line. Once these steps are complete, you should have a very, close-to-perfect vocal mix.

— Mike with the Mic

CCM Recording Studios

Broken Tongues Music

Denver Recording Studio Blog.com