Kenny Beats Deconstructs his Rap Vocal Recording & Mixing Template Live - All DAWs in Description

okay we can do the vocal change my vocal chain is in Ableton but I'll tell you I learned how to make my vocal chain from watching Alex to May and Pro Tools so even if you use fruity loops or you use something that I don't use and you're not in Ableton all the I'm about to tell you about vocals will still work for you oh hello and we're in Ableton how are we feeling today okay here is my template we are looking at my template this is my vocal template but I will give you this exact template so if you can't figure it out now perfectly or it's not making sense or whatever I'm just gonna put this file up to download or I'm gonna give you all a link I'm gonna figure out the best way to do that I'm sure someone could teach me how to do that but this was developed from stealing young thug's template that Alex made working with him so Alex to Mei is my really good friend and mixes a ton of my music and mixes like a lot of your favorite music everything from thug and gonna - Travis stuff to childish gambino to all types of things he's unbelievable he's worked on a lot of stuff but Alex did this periscope he was all mean and like for grudging in it and he did this like two years ago and he was like all right you know how to record vocals like all you do is make beats like I'm gonna show you all how to build my template from scratch this is what I do working for thug blah blah blah and it was like a - as there are two hour long videos long as hell and he would go through like Pro Tools from nothing so he would just open up Pro Tools completely blank I had a track I had a bus out of sand whatever the and he would just start putting it together and for me even though I kind of understood what was going on like it didn't fully make sense to me until I started using it a lot but if his periscope was so good that I was able to build this and so this thing that I'm showing you is what I've used since 2018 I've updated certain reverbs I'll change it out for certain people but if you look at any one of my sessions this is the most simplified version of it all I have right now is room for main vocals and ad-lib vocals sometimes people also have stacks and so like harmonies or they as if they're singing or they've another person on the song you know what I mean I would just do two main this would be let's say Cimino here and we do jid here you know what I mean whatever the but what I have what I have my template setup for is Sam's gonna work with somebody that day I got ad-libs right here I got my main vocals right here I put the beat right here this is a tracking track tracking just means recording that's where you record but this was built off the tomato and I've used it forever so all reco should all quiche it all events should all it's stupid from you start naming people but you there's a hundred fifty songs produced by me where this is how we did the vocals did they get mixed by me no not since 2018 I mix like 777 and like some early but no this is just the cleanest way for me a producer who doesn't record who is not an engineer to be able to like get a rapper in the studio and do it myself because that's the only reason I wanted to start doing vocals I didn't do it cuz like I want to have better vocals of my songs or this like I want to make my sound cleaner the thing to me was what if someone wants to work with me and I don't have an engineer that's really it is so say you have like all these beats you know I mean and then your favorite rapper hits you and as I go I'm in your city let's work today but I don't have an engineer can you record me and then you can't record him what are you gonna do that's the first one I'm giving you like now you have the right beats you have the amazing artist and you're missing the one skill you need to make this happen that's why if someone said call my mommy that's why I made this template so I could pull up at any studio only full screen this so I could go to any rappers microphone at their house or even in my my studio my shitty little studio I can record whoever I want and it's really easy and I can see where everything is and blah blah blah and that's why I made this I'll go over just the template by itself and then how about we open a song we can open one and look at a song maybe I'll open some from unlocked or a song you guys know or some okay so this is how easy it is beat right here there's nothing on the B track I don't put any limiters or any masters or anything and I would also prescribe you which means you don't have to take my advice but you should oh don't put anything on the master track of your beats because I really just take a beat of mine and let me just pull a random Vita I'll literally just take like a beat that I did a day ago and I'll drag it right into the beat track it's I know this beats at 140 set my tempo to 140 so I'll you literally just put the beat right there so if your beat has a whole bunch of like mastering on it or you made it really really really loud this and that it's gonna sound up compared to someone's vocals and even if you're not doing this and you're not the one engineering it if you send somebody a beat and your super maxed out and loud when they put it in with their normal template and they start recording over and it might sound up to them in the studio and they might be trying to push their voice super hard cuz your beat is so limited and they might not want to rap on it they might want to sing on it so for me I tried like I said yesterday I try to get my program early into the read on the master track I try to make sure I'm getting as loud as I can with every beat but I don't put anything on the masters of my beats for this exact reason because I want to make sure when I'm recording vocals and doing all this on top of the beat the vocals sound loud and clean and it's not like my snare drums snapping in front of the lyrics you know what I mean so you take your the beat they want you put it right here boom this track you're never gonna use except to record this is the track you record on so this is where you would like set your mic up through and everything I don't have my mic plugged into my Mac but you would just have your mic running through this track and all I have on this track is a gate because even in my vocal booth there's a little bit of noise what the gate does is if there's like any noise going on except for someone talking into the mic it just Dead's it so I have the gate set super low but basically if there's any like room noise someone open in a bag of chips anything really quiet the gate just gets rid of that completely and just makes it so only the signal from the mic is what I'm hearing I have a channel EQ these are exactly the settings that - May showed for his like basic thug template I pretty much copied them I change them a little bit based on people's voices we can talk about that later but I'll give you the template you can have this exact settings feel free to copy it right here on top of that I have a - a this is by the way all the on the show in this template is wave so if you has waves you can use this anywhere you ad and a lot of these other things sound amazing but I've gotten stuck so many times not having my like you ad USB thing or whatever the and then not having my satellite with me and not being able to open songs I did so basically I'm just giving you guys a template that's all waves I feel like everybody has waves no offense to ways but people crack their all the time like you probably have waves so I want to make this an easy thing you can always open on your computer and it won't cost you a million dollars if you don't um it's a combination of bundles I think yeah I think if you get the diamond bundle you got almost everything but whatever on my track that I'm recording the vocals on we have the gate to get rid of noise we have this random EQ just to give them mic a little bit I know basically my mic in my room so it basically just gives the mic a little bit more of a sturdy sound and cut some of the lows out whatever this is very important I'm not really using the 2a as like a compressor I'm using it for peak reduction so goes boom and then they go boom it takes that boom and it brings it in a little bit so it's closer to the boom so whatever the quietest vocal they use and then the loudest vocal they use it kind of brings them closer together peak reduction it just like matches them up a little bit it's not it doesn't do the best job ever but this thing is good enough for when you're recording and it doesn't color the vocal too much so when someone screams don't sound weird to them everything's gonna sound fine these are my settings always by the way on all your waves plugins turn off the analog that analog button bro stupid oh the analog button on waves is just noise it's trying to make your sound vintage it's trying to make your like feel cool and old and warm or whatever the turn it off it's just making noise so whenever you open a lot of waves plugins when you open this to a one of those analog buttons right here is gonna be clicked on turn that off on every wave slug and turn off in a lot always um these are my settings change your settings based on your mic but really whenever the person is screaming or at their loudest like it should never be really higher than like seven to ten ten is really pushing it but like you never want this thing jump in really past seven so with your peak reduction as you go with your gain as you go but I just leave that on there so when the person's recording everything's kind of even and then at the end of it just a waves de-esser I don't even have a good setting on this always make sure this thing is set to this little dome I don't know why but it's better just it's a becket little eq sidechain curved thing I don't know but it just sounds way better I always leave that thing on the curve but I will like on this de-esser whenever I'm on my main vocal track like I will change just the presets in here and go from male for men you a lot of times sometimes I'll do a female if someone that's really high voice even if their guy and then also just the dave pensado hulk de-esser i found to be really good for a lot of people so yeah I'm telling you all this in depth because basically all these things are in my main vocal chain so now that we've covered those four things there's only like two or three other things super easy for the SSL I'm pretty sure I use the e I know you so much that's your G I know it's you can trade out anything in this chain for a better version of it or version you like more as I show you my reverb Zoar my delays or whatever the house feel free to trade out and you give this for anything else this is just my vocal template like this is just sounds really good in my room with every person you know and granted I used to use this with just a microphone and Avalon and a duet slowly I made a little bit of money and I got the tube tech and I got a John Hardy but don't worry about your software even if you have a microphone going right into your interface right into your computer this template should boot your up a little bit make it a little more listenable I'm sure all this gets recorded don't worry about it that's my chain you see it even says right over here to may change that's my basic tracking chain so that right there is gonna help your vocal level out and but it's not gonna give it any like there's obviously it's not reverb in there there's no delays there's no nothing when you start to talk about delays and stuff over here these are my sends so all these little meters right here they correspond to all this down here whenever you open a new beat in Ableton you always see you have like a and B like a reverb in a delay that they just give you that no one ever uses really when they make beats but basically these sends are all of different effects and really these are just reverbs and delays and a doubler these are all different effects that you can put on your vocal a little bit at a time so down here I have like a reverb on this track and it's a hundred percent wet you know like all the way as much reverb as this plug-in can give but what I'm doing over here is I'm just to see where I'm my mouse is I'm just literally putting up a little bit of it at a time but now that I know that if I'm running something through that reverb do that send all my vocals are gonna run through that same send anything where I've like pick up this little lever right here is gonna get that same reverb to that same channel so all my vocals will have the same reverb on my oh I haven't been reading the chat should be but all the vocals come outside away smoother than me putting a reverb on every track you know what I'm saying like me putting a reverb on every single different vocal and the whole song now my main vocals and my ad-libs all run through these same reverbs and delays and so they sound much cleaner you can set up separate ones for each if you want like I'm saying I keep this very basic someone said what is tracking I was talking about that before tracking just means recording this is the only track you record too this is the only place where you're gonna record vocals everything adds it if they want to do a main vocal if they don't do anything you just record it right here when you record it Blom you take it and you drag it down to here so we talked about the tracking track the recording track this is what's on it very simple a gate an EQ peak reduction a de-esser so and someone says sports any other T's and SS all that gets don't worry about auto-tune adore about that let's say we're just recording the hard ass rapper right now let's just say we're recording someone very easy but you can use this template for everybody you know saying like you can go use this for ski masks right now and then turn around the next day and use this ferrati and it works just as well for both of them these are the tracks where you're gonna put all the vocals that you're keeping if you're keeping an ad-lib if you're keeping a main vocal you take that wherever they recorded it and you drag it on one of these I usually leave two spots four versus two spots for hoax those can change obviously if you need more room for reverses you can make more verse tracks whatever the but if I like a vocal or they say alright punch me in the alright keep that I literally just take it from the recording track click and drag and put it on one of these the reason I have all these tracks in a group is because my vocal chain is only on the group there is nothing on any of these tracks there's nothing on the verse tracks nothing on the hook tracks so the by the way you're only getting this template if you subscribe it looks like Prime in Tier one I don't know which one's better but you better do the good one cuz that's the one where I'm gonna send the template this over here is so easy you just put the vocals you like on any one of these tracks and then they're all gonna sound even they're all gonna sound the same they're gonna be the same volume they're gonna be a completely equal where you change your settings is up here on the group you don't need to go in here if this if the vocals are too loud you don't go in here and turn this one down a little bit and then take this one and turn this one down a little bit leave these all exactly at 0-0 then literally just change okay I'm gonna take this down I'm gonna add a little more of the big reverb alright I'm gonna take away some of the small reverb I want a longer delay that it we talked about sans like this is a short reverb right here a long reverb really short delay what is it one fourth delay 1/8 1/16 delay slap delay a doubler which I always leave at about 20 it's a waves doubler I'll give you the copy my preset if you want really simple but I put a little bit of doubler on everybody's voice because it doesn't make it sound like there's two of them or spread or anything it just makes it sound a little bigger and now you only use a little bit of it but besides that all I have is reverb and delays and the volume so if they want a little more reverb really all you're using is sorry all you're using is this one the second reverb in my my template the long reverb that's the one you hear so if someone wants to sound like Travis Scott you put like the Travis got ad-libs you put that to like 11 you know what I mean if someone wants to sound like me goes main vocal you put that to like 21 if someone wants to be pretty much all the way dry you bring it back into like the early 30s that's what I found I'll show you what the reverb setting is I'm using a vowel how room three-second delay that's my long delay I don't have any big crazy five-second super wet thing but this is my delay setting and that on in front of that delay I have this EQ so feel free to copy that if you want I'll show you the different cuts I'm doing but basically you want this EQ after your delay on that channel because if you don't it's gonna just be hectic and maybe way too many well getting so mad I'm here for the people let me get a frog of you having a good time all that we need to we need that we're getting too deep we're getting too deep we're gonna go back to it don't worry I need I need to get my vibe right y'all someone yelled at me in the chat I need hold on let me play some music real quick come on guys what is this why are we in here yelling at each other on a Saturday we're all stuck in our house I know it's been a week okay we can go deeper and deeper and deeper so if you subscribe let me I need to reset though cuz they all made me mad you put your beat right here every time someone raps or sings they do it on this track any time they want to keep something you put it in one of these two groups if it's a main vocal you put in here if it's a background vocal you put it in here if it's part of the verse ones put it on these tracks it's part of the hook ones you put it on these tracks if you need more of either and just make more nothing goes on the tracks that the vocals are on I repeat the tracks that have the vocals on it have nothing on them you put the dry vocal from this track on to this dry ass track with nothing on it all my tracks are in a group and the group has the chain repeat the group has the chain the group has the chain okay there we go y'all are learning let's go education you put the chain on the group so everything everything in the group sounds the same you want all your vocals to be even you want every time if someone rather they punch in and they say one sentence and then they take a 30 minute break and then they say another sentence you want those two sentences to sound completely equal so we're gonna put everything in these tracks and then here's my chain I will give you this chain it's called the tomb a chain I stole it from Alex to May he did it in Pro Tools I do in Ableton you can do it in free loops or whatever the you want it's really easy I put a gate cuz my room's not perfect and I am NOT rich and I do not have a silent suyo like I need so sometimes there's noise sometimes people talk sometimes people eat chips the gate is an Ableton stock gate and all I use it for is to get rid of anything that's not the vocal so if there's any little you don't hear any of it all that gets cut out by the gate and all you hear is no no man but BAM whatever people singing a little EQ it's like a channel EQ everything's waves in the template by the way oh yeah when you move this over copy setting again if you have it now I'll copy it this is the the EQ I have on my vocal for my mic do you wanna cut all the lows out of your vocals no not all the time does everybody's mic and everybody's voice need this much of an EQ boost no not all the time but I know based on my mic and a lot of the people I've been working with I always need a little bit of a you don't I mean I need a little bit of a raise on the high end because people's voices just don't punch enough so this is just the basic EQ that I leave on there I'll leave it on zero latency while I'm recording as soon as I'm done recording and I have the whole song I make this natural face because like we talked about yesterday if it's not such a natural phase it's not making the hardest cuts that can zero latency wants your computer or run fast this wants it to sound good linear phase is even crazier but it doesn't always work right I don't know what the answer is natural phase sounds better I if you use anything but 2cq go ahead this EQ is the though you know so I like if you don't have pro q and you haven't heard of it I'd say try it I'll show you some cool with it I'm gonna open a song after this so y'all can see but uh that's my EQ after my channel EQ I have a de-esser I just like that hook pen Sado setting I just like it sometimes I gotta change it to mail and bring this baby down when people are suit got crazy asses or crazy teas or we move it over sorry sorry sorry I moved or I like that Hulk pensando setting and then yeah sometimes I'll set it to the male and I'll bring over here but make sure this thing is always the hill I'm not sure what that little sidechain EQ thing means but you want it to be a hill by the Bing boom after that I got the two a I have that on my tracking track I already showed this I don't use this really to compress it or give anything oh sorry I don't use this to give anything a lot of gain I'm not using this to like boost it at all but I'm using it over here with the peak reduction so that my loudest words and my quietest words of every vocal are almost the same volume you see what I'm saying like some of those bap or they go Bop it's gonna be closer together there won't be such a big discrepancy even if the audio looks really up that'll help and then you see in the end of my chain I have a CL a vocal Alex - may would not recommend this and a lot of real engineers are not with this a lot of the best producers I know use it on vocals in the studio because it's a quick way to make sound big and full and loud and for me what I think of the CLA vocal thing of in my head is like how do you make the beat knock and the vocal loud at the same time before I put that on I'll turn my vocal up like really loud sometimes and the beat will still just either be too quiet or be overriding it for some reason when I put the CLA vocal on the finished final vocal it makes it like it makes it easier for me to turn the beat up and still clearly hear what the person saying can't explain it CLA is a little suss it's not exactly anything but I'll show you what my setting is boom boom boom boom boom I don't use any of the trouble I don't use any of the reverb I don't use any of the delay I use a little bit of the bass in it for them to make the vocal little bigger I compress it a tiny bit and which gives it the strength I'm talking about probably and I don't know what that last does but I've always had it on there and it's staying on there it's the only thing in my chain that's turned off why is it turned off I don't turn that on until the songs done it's a sound good eyes er you know what I mean like it's not a real thing it's not a proper plugin so like while people are recording it's gonna give it too much character and it's gonna they're gonna get used to it I don't put it on while people record and then it also up your latency so it'll it'll make the the a little up while people are trying to record vocals you don't want it on until the end so when everything's done you've got the whole song and they're in here Bob turn this thing on go into pro-q turn this to natural phase with the EQ a little bit with your reverb over here a little bit maybe you can also obviously like automate if you want the reverb only to do certain times you can always go do that but like I with just the overall setting and about if you don't know how I just got to that I'm just hitting a hay goes to automation M is if you want to use the keyboard is for automation a but yeah I'm just with the overall setting with these things right here and with this chain and that gets me really close like I can't tell you how many times I've done a vocal like with just that template nothing else those exact settings and like barely even changed anything and the song was already pretty much there so imagine when you start making it specific to each person or you start mixing it or you go back and fix something in the beat it's crazy but really it should be this easy I think you should be able to make a beat really quick drag the beat right onto this other session and then start recording in here why do I not record it in the same session as my beat your computer's gonna up even the nicest computers like I don't think anybody has a computer where you can have like 120 tracks and then be recording a vocal and should just be perfect like but even if you have a beat that's five tracks your computer is gonna go slow if you are recording and trying to do a whole bunch of with a whole bunch of vocal settings on top of all your drums so I'll just bounce the beat real quick even if it's not perfect and throw it in but there's something about having to bounce the beat and put it into Ableton that's like final even if you know it all that snare is too loud or like I'm gonna fix those high house you bounced it and you put it in there and a lot of times people start loving the song the way it is when they made it and gets stuck that way and then you start realizing like oh these things I thought were imperfections in my beat or things I was gonna fix or whatever like they end up making the song but that's the kind of you get the confidence to do and your production once you start learning this once you start learning how to record vocals and like this isn't even that crazy bro this is like not even what like a real-deal engineer is gonna be using this is the sound good Iser version but if you can record vocals like this you start to decide like oh like I was saying before like Oh boom boom right here we're gonna do a beat cut and then go do you sorry you have to make decisions now imma cut the B right here you know whatever the but you are in more control because now you're recording it you have the vocals on your computer that you see what I'm saying there's only benefits to learn how to record people you don't need anyone's help once you get with an artist like you could do the whole song top to bottom by yourself you get to keep the files you get to make more decisions and fix the that the rapper is doing wrong or the artist is doing wrong like if they are a little ahead of the beat if the note is wrong to quickly change it if like anything is if they say if they said something better three takes ago you know what I mean you can literally go back pick the best one be like hey wouldn't wanna use this one instead of this one when you're sitting in the room smoking the backward and they wrap it on your beat and the engineer is taking care of everything you're not even gonna see that detail you're not even gonna remember that another take was better or this other reverb sounded better earlier when you had it on a different setting like these are all things that you need to be in control of so yeah I know everybody can't get in the studio with an artist I know some people live in the middle of nowhere I know like engineering sounds boring but I'm telling you this is the best way to get your beats to people this is the best way to make people sounds good on your beats and like this is the best way to get in with artists so if you can start to learn the vocal a little bit you can just take you so far look I got my tag in this so I don't even take my beats I tagged my songs hold on ability that was hard I don't even tie my beats I tied my so stupid okay okay oh yeah I'll leave my tag warps do you see the warp on the bottle I'll leave my tag warped it's my tags like 133 130 and I literally have it just warped complex to the setting I mean to the obsession that's not even the spot so really [Music] I actually have someone on this beat but yeah like if you have your tag in the session - that's another thing you get to play people all these random beats and just bow like this is how I would play the beat you know I mean I would not play one there's no like there's no well Kenny's in any of my beats you ever ever open a beat for you you'll see there's not one whoa Kenny and on my beat session up on my wall Kenny and my vocal template so if I'm working on a song with somebody the well Kenny's in there because if it's not a song it doesn't need to be in there it's just gonna somebody's gonna hear and then have an opinion like yeah that's another just swaggy thing to have in your template cuz if you're a producer and your people are like I only record people on my beats I don't record people just to record people so if you're recording me you're recording on my beat so the tag is right there if I need it and a lot of times I don't even using the tag a lot lately but it's there this is my vocal template just a couple more settings for all the people who've been looking at this the whole time that's my short reverb you don't really hear it that's not gonna give you like an a big long reverb effect or like a it's really it's not gonna give you that type of at all this just gives the vocal body it's another boring ass waves reverb feel free to change that for a valhalla change it out for any reverb you like those are my settings but remember that's a send and so that's super wet and it has this little EQ I don't know why I got pro-q - but it has this little EQ curve on it and I'm only using it a little bit on my track you see what I'm saying on the on the the group the group has the chain remember but I'm only putting it over see right here I'm only putting it a little bit the big reverb is this one I got it right next to it the big reverb is this setting three seconds 100% 90% depth same EQ curve as the top one but besides that all these are just delays and that the doubler already showed all the doubler but these are all just different delay there h delay and they're all a little bit different remember turn off the low five turn off analog turn off low five if you if you use any all you can't see it turn off analog turn off Lofa if you ever see some analog if you ever see some low fayette on a waves plug-in it's just making noise turn that to off but yeah eight clay sixteenth away fourth light it's all pretty much the same setting i got a compressor on this delay that's doing a sidechain to the main vocal so every time the main vocal says something better up up up the delay is pulled back but when it ends the delays come back we'll talk about that later the stool sidechain but yeah I'm getting a little beep we'll go more deep in this later but this is my vocal templates how you do it if you've watched this whole live and by the way this live will be on my twitch channel I'm sure you can go through it and open the settings to pretty much everything you can see the settings to all of it but doing vocals I know that sounds boring I'm sorry to everyone who left because they're not trying to hear that but if you make beats that's the next thing bro and that's when you walk into a room with a kid who just makes beats and the artist is like oh no you can record me alright cool did it are you got more beats are you a low one up there it just puts you in a position every time like you want to walk into a room if you do UFC having the most fighting styles because in case the dude you're up against that day has jiu-jitsu and you don't know any jiu-jitsu like you're gonna be up that's how I think about it with music like you can play a little bit of an instrument if you don't know any instruments life you can learn a little piano on YouTube you can learn a little bit about recording vocals on top of making beats that's how you take over you mean that's how you crush like you gotta just cover your blind spots

Channel: Produced by Aleex

Views: 78,419

Keywords: Rap Vocal Mixing, Rap Vocal Recording, Kenny Beats, Kenny Beats Ableton Template, mixing rap vocals, how to mix rap vocals, how to mix vocals, Trap Vocal Mixing, How to mix trap vocals, how to mix hip hop vocals, kenny beats vocal template, fl studio, ableton, logic, mac, pc, alex tumay, alex tumay pro tools template, alex tumay mixing, alex tumay vocal mixing, alex tumay stream, alex tumay periscope, alex tumay kenny beats, alex tumay kenny beats stream, kenny beats template

Id: llWA9PJWOnE

Length: 34min 39sec (2079 seconds)

Published: Fri May 01 2020