4 Golden Rules to Mixing Hip Hop Vocals | Lu Diaz (Jay-Z, Beyoncé)

I do my name is Lu Diaz I'm a mess engineer producer based out of Miami Florida I've been mixing and producing for 25 years and I'd like to show you some tips and tricks on doing some hip-hop vocals so Tony mics vocals for the song that he provided which is called paradise they were recorded in South Jersey and then some of them were also recorded in actual studios which were in right now and the rest of his project was done also in Miami let me play this session for you guys so you guys get familiar with the song and get to know when I mix to me like the main thing is control so anything that's bothering you out of the vocal like when you listen to a vocal you open up a session first thing I do is listen to the vocal and just listen to frequencies that are jumping out at me that may be you know hurting my ears so believe it or not I will actually turn the vocal really loud and listen to it a really really loud level and see and listen to the things and areas are better they're bothering me first thing I'll do is run like for example like this is email q4 and it's just to take a little bit of that say from like 50 Hertz all the way down mainly because you may be on a system idea so parent understands or you may be mixing at home and you're not hearing 40 Hertz or 30 very low sub frequencies and then you may let the mix go and then you go to a club and suddenly you hear this slaughter or something that's because that was happening in the vocal you never know where these vocals are recorded and you just assume that you know what let's just wipe those frequencies out and get them out of there and then the next thing I do is the c6 obviously is to target all these little frequencies that bother me about the vocal and I'm able to sort of get my first wave of getting that vocal under control so here's the c6 bypassed I hate to talk but I'm never affected I'm deep in my pockets lucky for me I just came here to eat I don't feed in the gossip back so when you listen that vocal you have to start hearing what's bothering you about the vocal the first thing I do is use a c6 to tailor the sections that bother me so what I love about it is I'm able to trim back and I have the choice of having you know a baron with the choice of the natak Tom have a choice of a release not just for that one frequency and the envelope I can actually make it a wider compression and so what happens is for example here I'm gonna solo real quick so you can hear the frequency I'm trying to pull back now the great thing about it is you're able to you can sort of go fishing for it sweep across to find the frequency you want so for me that's the problem in that vocal right around that above 2 K maybe 3 K and I'm able to also zero in even more on the frequency by changing the cue and then I'll go and now you see the reduction that's happening right so let's hear it with it on I'm gonna bypass the first I hear to talk but I'm never affected I'm deep in my pockets lucky for me I just came here to eat I don't feed in the gossip back of my owner it's a very subtle thing but as you start adding EQ as you start adding effects as you start adding compression these freaker's are gonna jump out at you so for me that's what's so important and same goes for the low end so here at the low end part I'm actually doing the same thing that's controlling all that boxy feel that you give with vocals so this is why the c6 to me is essentially I usually like literally on every every vocal that ever worked on after that I follow with Manny's Triple D which I love because it's again another sort of c6 but it's a catch-all so you can see that the harsher part which is basically this frequency I'll solo for you I'm hitting that frequency again I hit it with the c6 but I like to have Manny's come after it to just to catch a little bit more same thing with the the boxing area I also use that and then I'll even go further and how to c1 and I put it in a lot of the de-esser preset and the same thing I'd go through the frequencies that bother me and you can listen to him fact that I'm deep in my pockets very subtle at that frequency that I'm hitting around 250 and then the last thing I do is usually my DSA now granted every vocal has you know a different need for de-essing but you always want to have a DSR there just in case and that de-essing for all those you don't know handles all the siblings all the frequencies from 7 up not very bright so I'll show you for example what we're doing here basic is grabbing all the esses and pulling all those SS down and then after that here's where I'm adding things to the vocal and I love the APR I love the high end on the API so if I want to brighten and give it a little shine I'm giving it that shine after I dust it right because I've controlled it and I'm able to bring that vocal up and give it that brightness that it's lacking without it bothering you I'll play it to you without and with lucky for me I just came here to eat I don't feed in the gossip back on my own I to earn my respect in a trip right so these things I do after I control the woken that's why the chain goes the way it goes and the very end like I said before it's the our box and that's what brings the entire group out to the front and I'll play it to you without it with it [Music] I could say your insanity you can see what happens but you can't do this without all the other steps first because if you do this now without any guessing without any banned target you know compression all those frequencies that just jumped out I thought I'm gonna jump out and bother you even more and when you you know when you bring all the elements back in or the rest of the of the track you'll be able to play and pull that vocal forward and backwards you know that that's where where the sweet spot for me are for vocals and that's that's really the the basics of a walk with Jenny why I have them in the order that I have my control first everything I can and then I start doing what's you know brightening things up and adding things and then finishing with a compressor but mixing like eyelids and vocal stacks and overdubs and all that stuff if it's if it's a vocal that's supporting the lead vocal so in other words just a double to the local you want to treat it as a lead vocal you want to keep in mono and put it you know behind the lead vocal but when it comes to eyelids and when it comes to you know sweeteners is what we call them to me I like pushing those on to the stereo field I like to leave the lead vocal as much as possible in the middle unless the producer or the artist specifically want them down in the middle or close I spread them out as far as I possibly can because it just opens up the stair feel for one and it gives that vocal room to sit by itself one thing you have to keep in mind when you do pants something out all the way like for example in this particular song you can see here in both these cases you see how all my my ad libs are spread out full stereo you have to be careful is when you send something to stereo all the way you're gonna hear a lot more than you would if it was down the middle with the rest of the track so when you bring it out be mindful to pull that bottom back so it doesn't overcome the lead vocal but and in this particular session if you can see I actually use the doubler here which really helps with spreading that well out right and in this case yes whispers [Music] back on my own I was making a chip so in this vocal I had to lead down the middle and then there's only one whisper track right I just went ahead and put the doubler on it to give it that the stereo field since I can't pan it out and this is a whisper I'm able to boom there's the are box and the are box has squashed it to really get with the energy really feel upfront and then push it back a little bit and then it comes on nice and clear here everything is saying and it's not overcoming the lead vocal in the middle of the group overall after that you know after the vocals controlled after I have the eyelids panned after the are boxes on the group bringing everything forward you still have effects used to have delays you have verbs you have flanges you have all these things you can use to give the vocal sort of depth or fit into the feeling of the of the song and then a delay is always your friend h delay i like to have depending on the song a quarter on ping-pong sometimes at eighth and stereo whatever it is that sounds good with the song and those are the little touches you you you use to just give all the vocal elements a little sparkle a little shine you know and for me I'm not big on giant effects I just like the effect to feel like something and not stick out of the track so much obviously if you want to just delay one word you'd want to you need to automate that one word right if you leave it static throughout throughout the throughout the throughout the mix Union every word is going to delay now in certain senses you want to use a static delay like I used for example here [Music] so I'm using this h delay and I'm using it at a triplet and the reason for that is just to the temple of it feels a little different the rhythmic miss of it feels a little different and it's very low in the in the mix it's just there to create air to create a mood just the way of a verb would be used but if I were to turn that send up it would sound ridiculously loud you don't I mean so what you want to do is when you do a throw they lie when you're highlighting something yes in that case you'd want to automate them but a static delays usually for me is used to create an effect to create a mood to create a feel for them for the for the vocal I'm gonna show you just real quick a little delay throw that I used on this verse so that means you automate the actual scent I have a delay sat at a quarter 145 BPM and a little bit of a high pass a little bit of a low pass so it has a little radio effect so just only the word milady was sent to the delay on the actual vocal if you wanted to do that whether they cute it's super simple it's the same principle you sweep everything out from the low end and everything off from the high end and maybe you know 1k maybe to 3k you you might want to bump up that and give it that that radio effect so I'm using the req and you see I'm sweeping everything from 500 down and I'm boosting a little bit here around 2k so I said before and that gives you the radio for all solar for you and then we'll play with with him without that's with it and this is without it right so the other delay has that same radio effects altogether and then in context of the song [Music] DJ crazy said he got a session so there's a section in the song where we wanted to use the that out of that t-pain effect and we plugged in waves tuned and you can see right here I'll play the section real quick it's pretty self-explanatory you know we just slam in the slam in the settings you want the correction all the way up you want the speed to be as fast as possible and you know we're just we're after that t-pain effect and with the waves tune retune we're able to do it super easy super quick I'm going to show you the effect we used waves reach them to do it and obviously you've got to find the key of the song in this case is a major and then your speed and your correction got to be slammed but it's fairly simple you get to hangover really Greg I'll solo one vocal real quick so you can hear it without it I'm a city where you need to strap up but didn't know long - every time I I'm a city where you need to strap up but didn't know long - every time I hit it right or run in doing wrong that's how you do it I was raised by the shade and see them snakes in the garden another change I'm more than doing drills in the garden and the hills god no the kid in the garden no names no talking make some medicine

Channel: Waves Audio

Views: 1,854,914

Rating: 4.9685121 out of 5

Keywords: Mixing hip hop vocals, Mixing rap vocals, mixing vocals, how to mix hip hop vocals, how to mix rap vocals, mix vocals, How to mix hip hop, mixing hip hop, hip hop vocals tutorial, mixing lead and ad-libs, rap vocal doubles, hip vocal doubles, rap vocal ad libs, waves plugins hip hop vocals

Id: q7l0kcstqIM

Length: 12min 54sec (774 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 25 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/VideoGameDJ]

This was great

[u/tycoonking1]

Definitely reinforces some of the theory behind why I mix vocals the way I do, great vid. I was impressed with his use of the C6, it's almost like he is de-essing in three stages.