Three Tips To Help You Mix Vocals

The quality of a lead vocal is absolutely fundamental to whether a track will succeed or fail. If your music features vocals in any way, you need to be able to mix this vital element with confidence. Below, we discuss some of the aspects of vocal mixing that you should try to get to grips with.

1.Think Carefully About Signal Flow

Your vocal FX chain will often be the most complex in your mix, so you need to think carefully about what each element is doing, and where in the chain you place it. A typical vocal chain might include some kind of subtle distortion or tape emulation, a de-esser, an EQ and one or more compressors. The vocal will often then be sent to a reverb and one or more delays. Think about the position in the signal chain that you place each plug-in. A vocal will sound different if it goes through the de-esser before, or after the EQ. It will sound different if you add saturation before or after compression. There is no right or wrong here – every engineer has their own preference – but you do need to consider every step you take, and don't be afraid to experiment! If you are just starting out with mixing vocals, take your time and explore all of the possibilities. In time, you will find a workflow you like, and you will gradually mix faster and more efficiently.

2.Add Stereo Width

We've written about this trick before, when discussing pitch-shifting – but it's such a classic technique, we think it's worth covering again here. This is one that you will have heard on countless hit records. Begin by copying your lead vocal onto two new tracks. Pan these two tracks hard-left and hard-right, and then pitch one of them down by 10 cents and the other one up by 10 cents. Filter off the top end of your pitch shifted vocals, and put them through a 10ms delay. Bring the faders for these new tracks all the way down, and bring them up again slowly, gradually adding a subtle amount of chorus to your lead vocal, making it sound wider and thicker than it did before. There are certain FX plug-ins that can perform this entire process for you – take a look at SoundToys' Microshift, for an example of one that does it very well. 

3.Thicken It Up

This is actually similar, in a way, to the tip above in that it is possible to thicken up a lead vocal by duplicating it, and then processing those duplicated copies. This tip works very well when applied to pop or EDM mixes, when you need that vocal to sound super-polished - you probably won't use it on a garage punk mix! Again, make two copies of your lead vocal track, but this time keep them panned centrally. Next, pitch one of these up an octave and one of them down an octave. Put both of the pitched copies through your lead vocal FX chain and pull the faders all the way down. Gradually bring the faders up – the idea here is that you don't really hear either of the pitched copies as distinct tracks in their own right, so keep their levels low. What you should look for is that the high-pitched copy will add brightness to your lead, while the low-pitched copy will add depth and 'thickness'. 


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