Original subtitles

at this point of the mix we want to dedicate time to the vocal mix there's a different techniques

not necessarily you should do vocal at the end of the mix for my personal experience

it's better I like to create a foundation of the song and have the vocals sit

on top of the music and I do this regardless of the style on any style I like to do that

case of the song the vocals are totally dry so we're gonna work on reverb and delay let's dive in

to focus more on the vocal I'm going to literally take every music element out of the screen

I just want to I don't want to see it in doing that I think allow me to

focus more on the vocal and also there's no temptation to go and change um the

music right so if I only see that actually add a reference and rough I'm gonna take that away too

so if I only see the vocal I think it's it's sort of it's a good way let's take that

see another track that I want to see

okay let's go finally let's open the vocals we still have control of the music on the bussing

but I'm not going to look into the session so there's nothing there the killer distraction

notice few things already this one element very loud in the vocal this

let's slow it down

so for now let's mute any vocal element that is not a lead vocal so it's not fuse

singing delete parts let me push the waveform so I can see more

let's go from

okay

let's do some proper compression EQ let's clean the vocal

second part here

what we should do is create a bus

the way we can optimize the user plug-in it's called lead delete essentially two stems

lead vocal there we go and let's start from this

vocal seems really good I just want to just

make sure there's no any ringing weird little points to check that places button and places

button in places it's a little bit bleeding on the bottom that we don't need it so place this

button in place you can do low shelf or you can do with low cut let's try low cut first place

new little shelf with the same type of cut to maybe like 24 db

so we take the energy away without cutting entirely

very nice let's rebuild

the top end with a nicer EQ so for now we just

and now let's compress

we'll try first we paddle the compression that way we're not actually affecting 100% of

the vocal I just want to blend one cool things you can do with studio one, let's go on folders

and compressor let's say you want to do a Tube-Tech you can just throw on the send

and we'll create a parallel we go on the vocal now we can put an EQ

let's say a Mäag EQ4 before the Tube-Tech to tell the Tube-Tech to type where to compress

okay for now when you click on the send it

become yellow it's pre-fader this means I can pull the fader down we only have compression place is

burning our place is burning our place is burning our place is burning our place is burning our

place is burning our place is burning our place is burning up gonna go very aggressive and then blend

with the no compress

let's push some low mid

that will trigger even more the compressor

okay now pull the level down to zero let's go take away the pre-fader go back to zero here and

now we're going to blend between the two

I like it

let's shave the top end so we are not getting any type of top frequency before the Tube-Tech

place is burning our place is burning okay let's see is burning uh places bunny pretty

cool does it with the music let's go four bar

I think it's very nice to give like a very thick

tone let's try a few parts let's go here for example

so I feel that it's getting thicker with more control on the bottom

and improve a lot

okay I'll keep coming so now we are

affecting both stems they're going into the bus the bus has a parallel compression and

that's the tone that we have on both stems we want to just before we go into reverb

see if across the song is anything that doesn't fit with parellel compression for example here

I feel both it can go up a little bit so just do that

let's go back to the beginning, when I want to control

two channel with the same level so the same relationship of level

instead of creating another bus I can simply create a VCA channel and I do

add VCA to select channel now we have one channel controlling two the great things about the

VCA they don't affect the level of compression so even if I pull the level down this is just

purely level not changing on EQ, compression or saturation so let's call this VCA lead

across the song I can do automation

just on the VCA I do option A on Studio One and now I'm creating a level automation

so for example the all intro part can be way lower you can do that

and then keep going through the song we can do this later where we go into the bridge

and we want to decide to bring it up a little bit now we can do it and go back into the chorus

very very fast very easy

stay on the on the verse I want to treat the combination of the two at this point I go into

my vox bus and I want to use a little bit of top end and I'm going to do the color eq for that

just to bring a little bit of the shine on the 15k like a fire

there you go maybe the preamp will help even more

right so now we're going to talk about reverb but before that let's A and B

place is burning up burning up love it let's talk about time-based effect reverb and delay

so I want to just do one general reverb across everything on the vocal

and then eventually a little bit automation later so let's do

on both so equally the way I created the

parallel compression I'm going to do the same with the Valhalla throw this here now creating

reverb let's give a different color that's the reverb send

and with this we're gonna go on vocal two the way is not being treated so if you go

the vocal it's lead vocal two is dedicated to background vocal doubles reverse all that

we definitely should do side chain reverb

very useful to keep the the vocal clear easy to understand so

what we do we take the lead vocal as a side chain there we go assign to external

so what we try to do is the vocal it's on the reverb it's off

the vocal it's off the reverb is on, so

so when we stop the vocal the reverb will come up now to give some consistent reverb

we'll do a little bit of parallel but then we're going to have a jump of reverb when the vocals

stop let's take two parts just to get used to so let's do that two bars

four to one ratio sorry classic

now let's blend some dry

I like it let's color a little bit of reverb it's a little bit too clean

let's do some coloration to the reason let's look at the noise the wobble the little distortion

a little bit too much so let's lower a little bit there we go

okay let's go on the chorus

I'll keep coming back forever you and I anyway very nice I feel the still misses some thickness

but that's on the overall vocal so not on the reverb so we're gonna do the combination of the two

will benefit of some 120. back me up it's such a pleasure body falls like a treasure

very great so now we want to add some delay strategically when the vocal goes one octave

higher we're very effective so we're going to take this part this part and this part

this is the Echo Boy Junior for that I'm gonna throw on the track and then create some automation

i want to do a quarter low cut I cut so sit on the mid range

I'll keep coming back if I push some saturation on

studio tape it's really good pleasure body falls like a treasure if we click on mixing up once

and then option+a now we create an automation

so what we can do essentially is outside of the chorus cut the delay entirely so we go here

so we essentially adding with the mix knob just on the chorus let me go here

essentially it's everywhere minus those intro seems everything

well we have no information there but just to make sure also visually we know we're doing

is this are we going to the bridge

so Echo Boy is being applied only on the chorus we keep the the rest with

the normal reverb with automations now that we have delete vocal between compression EQ reverb

and delay I want to look into the background vocals see what really makes sense to keep

let's open everything that we have

let's close the mixer for a second

we're not going to reinvent the mix the producer made a lot of decisions

we just want to check if this anything doesn't feel right

so this part let's check this

is actually a really cool part and I feel it's almost lost into the mix

let's make some auto panning that will work really well let's do that

et's bring the mid-range up it's really cool

let's use the same Valhalla reverb for that

very nice let's cut all the top and bottom

like that

feelings very nice we have a second layer here it's loud enough duplicate that completely spread

make left and right get rid of almost everything about the mono just keep on the side feelings

sounds great

very cool let's go on the on this part

okay

usually when I have stack of doubles or background vocal if I feel they're

put together well I need more compression just bring and glue with that with the lead what I do

I kind of select those create a dedicated bus it's called background in this I do heavy compression

we will do R-Vox. R-Vox is kind of like a LA-2A emulation from waves in some way

okay let's blend your level

definitely works now if you're green a little bit of top end well sounds even better do the 20.

absolutely works let's see very nice we have another part here let's find out what it is

I want to make it blue of course let's go back to pink there you go

very nice

tough one when I have this type of scenario when I have two layers like this I want to

give a specific space into the mix so if we will for example let's do almost right almost left

oh don't you like you miss me think

okay I want to blend the same type of compression that we add on others so let's go

here so the background let's put these two vocals under the same treatment on the background so

I'm gonna change the busing to background so we'll benefit from this type of compression

there we go,

now we're simply gonna lower and that's the amount

of compression they're gonna bring in think

just to remember the way it was before okay let's go

very nice

all right let's take a kind of like a big picture approach

on what we add and the way I do it I just like jump between the tracks really quick let's go here

overall too loud let's just bring the level down a little bit about 3db

verse

feels good

very nice the last part I want to do is a different vocal there's a different tone this part

and everything that you said I just simply want to cut this part and just simply separate the part

and just do a little bit different approach with maybe saturation

and

when he goes to so many times we go back

right there so here I was gonna go back

so I'm gonna treat that part

just do that

very nice so just

give a little bit of like more like a tube tone

just as a little thing is just a different delay just for that part

let's see how it works

I like it so let's see

just a little bit too loud so let's lower that a little bit

maybe 3db and everything is very nice, very cool

well guys I think we have the the overall like vocal mix done on this what I do now I just

go bring back everything else on the session we get to the point that we're getting very

close to mastering so at this point in the mix I take a break maybe take one hour break detach

myself forget that I was the mixing engineer on the track and come back as a master engineer