EQ and Compression Techniques For Vocals and Acoustic Guitar
Compression
When I first started reading about compressors I was hopelessly lost. The terminology was technical in an almost mean-spirited way and I couldn’t make heads or tails of what was being written. To keep things simple, I think of compression as a way of evening out the loud and soft parts of any vocal or instrument so that its behavior is a bit more predictable. In other words, compression brings up the really soft spots and tames the really loud spots so that you’re not constantly reaching for the volume fader on your mixing board (or virtual mixing board on your DAW). In its simplest form, a compressor, whether a hardware unit or a plug-in, will squeeze the Read more
Mixing Music – 5 Tips For a Professional Mix
Mixing music can be an incredibly inspired process. It is my conviction that it is best to get all of the managerial work out of the way to help facilitate a far more inventive and exciting mixing experience. Use these steps as a guide, make them your own, and I promise you that your final mix will be far more productive. Read more
Multiband Compression
Multiband Cutoffs In general, you want to try to split your mix so that each region captures a prominent section of your mix. For example, the strategy behind the default band cutoffs is as follows… Band 1: This band is set from 0 to 120 Hz, to focus on the "meat" of the bass instruments and kick drum. Band 2: Band 2 extends from
Reverb Settings
We are used to hearing our music played indoors in buildings with acoustic properties. The natural reverberation affects all the sounds in a building. Every sound has the same reverb.
Pop production tends to use a variety of reverbs within the same mix; each instrument can have a different amount of Read more
Advanced Vocal Processing
Advanced Vocal Processing
Lead Vox
- Add a small amount of harmonic distortion or tape emulation.
- Send a subtle chorus, fed from the main vocal, hard left. Send the same chorus, phase inverted, hard right. This effect will cancel out in mono. Too much will make the vocal too quiet in mono.
- Use a stereo delay to add small amounts of delay (around 35 ms). Use different settings in the L and R. Bring it up until you hear the vocal spread. Also, try 15 ms on one side and 30 ms on the other; this should not cancel out in mono.
- Record a doubled take, or use comps to produce a ‘second best’ track. Use the double low in the mix so that it isn’t an obvious doubling. Timing is the important bit for a doubled track, not tuning.
- Try different doubled takes; one powerful and one with little projection and lots of whisper noise, or one standard and one with heavily accentuated accents on the beats. The accent track could be added to the main track, or used to feed the reverb.
- Try the ‘Ricky Martin’ technique; leave the main vocal panned centrally and make two copies. Pan one hard left and pitch-shift by -4 cents, and pan the other hard right and shift it +4 cents. Try other shift amounts; more shift can work well on backing vox.
Backing Vox
- Try putting a real-time pitch-shifter on a bus (Logic) or aux (Pro Tools) track. Set it to shift slightly up and down (try -4 and +3 cents). If the plug-in can only do one shift at a time, set up two. Pan the unaffected vocal slightly to one side, and the effected version hard over the other side. This should add additional ‘takes’.
- Put a stereo spreader onto a bus or aux track, feed it from the backing vox, and mix it into the backing vox subgroup. This should make them sound bigger and wider.
Other Vocal Stuff
- If you have a sibilant vocal track, the s’s can hit the reverb and make it ‘splash’. Instead of dropping the HF’s with an EQ, try putting a de-esser in between the main track and the reverb (on a Logic aux track, for example). This stops the main vocal being dulled.
- Try sending the vocal to a ‘send track’, such as a Logic aux track. Set a compressor on this which compresses the loud section but leaves the quiet ones uncompressed. When this is used to feed a reverb the loud sections will be dryer and the softer sections wetter. Changing compressor settings allows control of relative levels.
