When it comes to making a great record, vocals are one of the most important things to get right. They are what the listener is drawn to and convey the emotion & message of the song like no other instrument.
This video shows you advanced vocal mixing techniques achieve a full, gritty and up-front vocal sound.
If you listen to this vocal mix, you would probably think it was mixed using a lot of great analogue hardware. It has that certain character, fullness and top end sheen that we are used to hearing from analogue devices.
But it actually wasn’t! I mixed this vocal mainly in the box and I’m going to show you the some advanced processing you can use to make your vocals cut through the mix and grab your listeners emotionally.
Techniques covered in this tutorial:
- Creating fullness with with “Octave Trick”
- Parallel Distortion for grit and character
- The “Whisper Track” to enhance intimacy
- Compressing and EQing in stages.
- Vocal Effects & Automation: Reverb and Delays
Watch the video below to learn more Advanced Vocal Mixing Techniques!
Hey Warren and everybody else too.
I have a quick question actually for David Mood since he’s the Studio One Expert if you could forward I’d appreciate it.
Side Chaining has been confusing me since forever. I’ve wanted to use it for delay effects on vocals but just can’t rap my head around it.
Side chaining in S.1 is pretty easy to set up however, the way it displays on S.1 confuses me as I don’t know what’s sending to where when I attempt to use the feature.
Can David kind of clue me in on what I need to check or uncheck in the display when attempting to use side chaining for vocals and to hold back the delay till there’s a break in the vocals so I can get that tail effect?
A lot of what you just went over just isn’t possible for me to do outside of the parallel compression and parallel saturation (which is really cool by the way) due to lack of enough ram to support all the additional plugins and buses. But I’d love to be able to use the side chaining features of S.1 specifically for controlling the delay on vocals.
I’m sure once I understand the display in studio one I will get it and get it right.
An example of what I’m aiming for can be found on our video of our song “Where Did I Lose Me.” I had to copy paste to separate track to get the effect I wanted, but I’ve been wanting to use side chaining to do this specific trick forever.
Thanks a bunch in advance.
Have a bodacious day.
P.S. Sorry I’ve been away for a bit, but a lot of good stuff has been happening lately and I’ve been swamped. Just did paid online session gig, and loved it. Hoping to get more “biz” coming in…and that was the direct result of the BAE Guitar Track Contest you sent out to us. The client loved the track he heard/saw and called me for harmonica tracks. Thank you sir, you helped launch a new section of our Home Recording Business. God Bless You and thanks to Mark Laughman as well for allowing us to submit even if we didn’t win the fuzz box. (Didn’t expect to…harmonica players don’t really use fuzz boxes anyway.)
oops…forgot to include the link… here it is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knP7qxlm87M
Hi Martin, here I am 🙂
So what is it exactly that confuses you with side-chaining in Studio One? I’m not sure what you meant with “display in S1”.
But it’s really easy: just insert a compressor which has an externel side-chain (the compressor inlcuded in S1 is fine) on the FX channel where your delay is sitting on.
Then, go the the send section of your vocal track, hit the + sign, and scroll down to “side-chains”. In the list there, simply select the compressor which is on the delay FX channel. Then all is left do to is to dial the right settings which works for your song, or what you’d like to achieve. That’s all there is to it, really.
I hope that helps, let me know how you get on!
Cheers, David
Thank you David…wasn’t sure if I was correctly understanding. When the drop down menu pops up it looks as if I’m side chaining everything. Right now I just want to concentrate of getting comfortable with delay on vocals, then work into the other aspects of using side chaining. Have a Great Weekend.
Marty
Thanks Warren! Is compression always first in your vocal chain? I can never tell whether to start with a clean-up EQ or compression in the chain. I’m so confused on this.