Hi, I'm Isabelle, And in this video, I'm going to
show you how to mix a vocal session. If you'd like to follow along, you can
check out the description below where I've linked all the stems that I'm using, so
you can just throw them into your DAW. Make sure you stick around
to the end where I get into my favorite part of mixing. It's going to get deep. Before we get started, I'm going
to have a quick listen to what the vocal files sound like without
any processing, just raw as it. Let's check it out. [Singing] Ah yes. This is a super fun vocal session. I loved working with Peggy on
this one and I love this track. So, I'm excited to get into it. Let's do it. The first thing I'm going
to do is some basic editing. Comping through takes, getting rid
of any unwanted clicks or pops, and doing some volume automation. Comping means taking the best
parts from several different vocal performances, and gluing them together
to make one seamless, super take. I'll set my cycle area to just the first
line, and I'll choose the best one. [Singing] I think I like that one the best. Alright, I'll move on to the next phrase. [Singing] What do these two sound like together? [Singing] I think I like, the last
word from that phrase. [Singing] Normally while I'm comping, I go through
each take and I kind of just let my body and my emotion guide my choices. It seems strange to just go word by word,
but sometimes you just kind of feel it like: Oh, the way that the singer said
this word, it was really, really nice. Just trust your instincts, have
a listen back and it'll be great. I'm done comping all of
the vocals in the song. You can see I've gone in and
selected different parts of different vocal performances
that I thought sounded the best. Now, what I'd like to do is
export those comps into new audio regions that I can actually work
with and edit and manipulate. I'll just do that by clicking
on the region there and "export active comp to new track". And then it shows up here. And I'll rename it: verse comp. And I'll go ahead and do that
with every vocal section. So the next thing I'd like to do is edit
out any unwanted clicks or pops or even breaths in the vocal that I don't want. Those usually happen in the
dead space between vocals. There's a really quick tool that you
can use use in Logic and I'm sure that your DAW will have something similar In logic, it's called remove silence. I'll show you how to use it now. Okay. So I've got the verse region
highlighted here and I'll press "control X" on my keyboard to
open up the remove silence tool. It's going to chop up the vocal section
by removing all the silent parts based on the threshold that you set here. And you can play with all of
these functions to get the exact edit that you want. And just like that, done. The next step is going to be
automating the volume for the vocals. The voice is a really dynamic
instrument that can get really loud and really soft during the performance. So, I'm going to want to go in and
automate the volume to make sure it's as level and even as possible. Okay. So to open up the automation parameters,
you can press "a" on your keyboard. It's automatically set to volume. So if I just click anywhere in
the region, It'll activate the automation line for the volume. I can click on the line to set a marker. Click another one, and
adjust the volume as needed. So, you can see here that I'm just
slightly bringing down some of the louder parts of her performance, and then
bringing up some of the quieter parts. You can even see this
visually in the transients. The ones that are popping out
really loud, you can just go in and bring them down a bit. And then the opposite for the lower ones. I've gone ahead and finished
all the automation for all the vocal sections of the song. So now the next step is
everybody's favorite: Auto tune. When using auto tune,
I try not to overdo it. I really like the way that Peggy
sang this song so I want it to sound as natural as possible. I don't really want people to be
able to hear the Auto-Tune, but that's a totally creative decision. That could be a sound that you
could be going for, so feel free to play around with the settings to
get the exact sound that you want. This song is in the key, Peggy's
favorite key, F sharp minor. F sharp. Minor. I'm going to set the retune
speed to medium, to start with. [Singing] I'll set it to slow to compare. [Singing] Yeah, I like that better for the verse. It's a lot more natural sounding,
and her performance was so great. I really don't want to overtune it. The next step is subtractive EQ. Now I'll be going in and
removing any problem frequencies that I want to get rid of. When you have a look at it, again,
it can be really intimidating. What does all this mean? Don't worry. First thing I'm going to do is
add a high pass filter to get rid of all that low room noise that
we just don't need in this vocal. Neat trick that you can do is actually
just close your eyes and just keep rolling this frequency over until the
vocal starts to sound too thin or tinny. That means you've gone
too far and roll it back. After you've done that high pass
filter, you can move on to the low mids. So when you're doing these cuts,
you want to make sure they're not too broad, because if you get rid of
too much, you're going to lose that essence and presence of the vocal. I'll turn the EQ on and off so
you can hear the difference. Yeah. So see, I think I've gotten rid of
a little bit too much, so I'm going to roll that back a little bit, and
not be too aggressive with that. I don't think I'm going to have
to go in and kind of remove any reflection frequencies that may have
been in the room we recorded in. We used the Shure SM 7 B, which is a
great mic to record in an untreated room. So, I think we're done for now. The next step is De-essing. We do this to get rid of sibilance. You get the point, I'll play
with the frequency of where I think her S's are happening. [Singing] Again, I don't want to be too harsh
with this because I don't want to remove the natural sound of her voice. [Singing] Yeah, it's really subtle. Just to be safe, we're
going to leave it on. Next up is compression. Vocals love compression. Remember how I already automated
the volume of the vocal so that it's less dynamic. Well, using compression is
just the icing on the cake. A compressor will squash the peaks of the
volume so that it stays more consistent. And, depending on the type of
compressor that you use, it can even add some extra color to the voice. If you want to learn more about
compression, you can check out the LANDR blog for great resources. I'm going to use a couple of different
kinds of compressors that I think will sound really good on Peggy's voice. This one is modeled after
the 1176 compressor. I'll play with the settings. [Singing] Cool. So on this vocal, I decided
to use a pretty fast attack, a bit slower of a release. And I played with the threshold and the
ratio as well as the output gain to make sure that there wasn't a huge difference
when the compressor was on and off. And you can see I'm getting about
minus seven DB of gain reduction. That's super important. Next up, more compression. And this time it's going to
be modeled after the LA2A. And again, I want about minus 7 db
of gain reduction, with a pretty quick attack and a slower release. [Singing] I like to use two compressors
one after the other, instead of just using one to do a huge job. That way each of them can do something a
little bit more subtle and not so drastic. The next thing I'll do is use additive EQ. Instead of cutting frequencies,
I'm going to be boosting them. This will help add even
more color to Peggy's voice. I'll add another EQ,
and I'll have a listen. [Singing] So, I think I'm just going to add this
6k high shelf around here to bring out that expensive quality of Peggy's
voice, and then a broad boost around 200 to add a little bit more body. Overall, I think that's it. Okay. As promised: my favorite part. Adding reverb and delay. Depth. I like to use the sends for reverb and
delay, so I can blend them in as needed. So I'll add a reverb to this
bus, make sure it's 100% wet. And you'll also want to make sure
that you EQ out your effects so that there's not some extra mud in the mix. That's good. Yeah, that looks good. I'm going to blend in
this reverb to taste. [Singing] Awesome. Next, I'll add some delay. And again, you want to make
sure that you filter out your delay, so that there aren't extra
frequencies muddying up the vocal. I'll put it two quarter notes. And again, make sure the mix
is set to a hundred percent and we'll blend it in to taste, [Singing] All right. And that's basically it. Let's have a listen to the chorus vocal
with and without all the processing. [Singing] Now I'm going to send it over to
Lorenzo AKA "IAMLXGEND" so he can add some ear candy in the next video. Make sure you like,
subscribe all that stuff. We want to hear your thoughts. What's your favorite part of mixing? EQ, compression, reverb, delay. I know it's reverb and delay. And thank you again to Shure
for making this video possible. See ya. Thank you.
