Denver Recording Studio

Vocals sounding dull and lifeless? Vocals just missing a little extra, something…? Here are some quick tricks I like to use in the studio.

The trick is making the vocals pop in the mix without actually popping in the mix.  What I mean by this is that the vocals should attract and hold the attention of the listener while not sounding out of place and drawing unwanted attention - let alone any “pops” in the recording tracks. For most styles of music, the vocalist should sound as if they are performing alongside their fellow instrumentalists.  With this general rule of thumb/disclaimer out of the way, here are some tricks I pull from when mixing…

— 8th note slap delays are fun, easy and work well on backups and some leads. Blend it into the back of the mix with verb… the more wet the verb, the more your delay will sound like a trailing reverb instead of a delay. Personally, unless it’s an arena ballad vocal you’re going for or some spatial exploration or something, I like a short/medium hall, or a med plate to set the distance between my lead vocal and the verbed-delay. Roll out the bottom and top and EQ as needed.

— A simple slap delay with a low wetness verb can be used to set a bed for the punching leads to rest on and give them a kind of ambience. Maybe start w/ ~110ms and adjust accordingly. A shorter slap will become more robotic sounding as it approaches a comb filter style sound.

— For hip-hop and pop tracks, I LOVE to use Eventide’s ‘Band Delays’ and Soundtoys’ ‘Echo Boy!’ They have so many unique presets it’s fun to find a jump-off point for a sound in mind. One of my favorites I’ve made is a 3-hit, slap delay with sharp peaks in the eq. Since there are 3 delays, I peak the parametric eq (Sharp Q of 6-10) at around 500hz, 1200hz and 2300hz for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd delays, respectively. They are also panned left, right and center, respectively, with the center and final delay hitting like a quarter note delay. I keep the send pretty low around -30db and let the little peaks do their thing deep in the mix. You almost never really perceive the slaps within the whole mix, but they add something I’ve come to really dig.

— An easier trick to spicing up a vocal mix is to add a characteristic verb with a stylistic peak in the eq. Using a broad Q setting in your parametric eq, gain it up maybe 5-7db and comb through frequencies with the rest of the track playing until you reach EUREKA! Cut out some of the other neighboring and/or offensive frequencies and you’re done.

—I will use one echo send at a very low level to run throughout the entire song and have another echo send  that is only used for obvious echoes from the same aux delay. The sends will be roughly -27db for the constant delay and -3db for the obvious delays. With the obvious delay send, I automate its unmute function wherever it’s needed.

— For a more stylistic echo, try increasing the feedback as the echo repeats and maybe try adding some distortion, phaser and/or flanger effects as inserts. Just automate the chosen effect’s “wetness” to increase as the sound repeats its echo. The echo starts normal and mutates!

— And lastly, perhaps the easiest way to get a nice echo with more character is to roll off the highs and the lows. Sometimes I will just leave it consistent having found a nice balance to use through out the track, or I may try automating the roll-off as the echo repeats. For instance, using a longer feedback (at least 60%), automate the high-pass filter to roll off the low-end as the echo repeats over and over. In this way, as the echo repeats the roll-off continues to cut frequencies higher and higher until the echo dissappears. This is a different way of exiting an echo and works well when a regular echo just won’t do.

Using these vocal mixing tricks will certainly step up your vocals… Just don’t overdo it when the song doesn’t call for it… and Good Luck!

And feel free to add your own vocal processing tricks below!

— Mike with the Mic

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