Logic Pro X - VOCAL MIXING Chain // How to Mix Vocals with STOCK PLUG-INS

hey everyone this is music tech help guy and in this video I'll show you how I would approach mixing vocals using only stock plugins in logic so I recently did a video on my typical vocal plug-in chain that I used for mixing vocals but that vocal chain would cost you well over a thousand dollars in third-party plugins so in this video I'm going to show you how I would get a similar effect just using stock plugins in logic so first I have the channel EQ here and typically what I do is I like to add a bit of a sibling sand air boost in the upper range usually somewhere above five or six K onward all the way up and then I'll typically boost the mid high frequencies somewhere somewhere in here between about one to two or three thousand Hertz just a little bit of a presence boost then I'll typically filter out the low-end usually around a hundred Hertz but it depends on the singer if it's a female vocalist I might go a little higher if it's a lower male vocalist I might go a little bit lower and then typically I'll add a bit of a boost just before the cutoff so let me dial in these settings real quick we'll control some of that unwanted sibilance later I'm next I'm gonna boost this mid high frequency here so I'll typically use a more narrow band and then I'll pull this up sweep it around find a point that doesn't over resonate too much it's gonna resonate no matter what you do because you're you know you're boosting the signal way way up I want to find a point in his voice that doesn't sound like there's a sine wave resonance boost there or at least one that doesn't sound you know terrible [Music] [Applause] like I realize that so much when I first met you and that was some time ago and then you pull it back it's just serving as a bit of a presence boost in the mid-upper range and I try to stay away from areas where there's a really like high whistling effect and if you find your input signal is a lot quieter than your output signal because of all these boosts in the EQ you can also you can compensate for this right here by pulling down the output gain life for I realize that so much when I first met you and that was some time ago now if you want to use a vintage model to EQ on the voice rather than the channel EQ if you want to get a bit more color on the voice you can try out the vintage console EQ and the vintage tube EQ from logics vintage EQ collection I don't recommend using the vintage graphic EQ that one's got a bit of more of a direct sound that I don't like on vocals it's like an API style EQ I never used that on vocals the vintage console EQ is modeled after like a Neve 1073 EQ and then the finished 2bq is modeled after two different pull technique use and what I'll do is mimic these same settings from the channel EQ up in the vintage console EQ so I'll give myself a bit of a high frequency boost around four DB and the mid gain I'm gonna give that about 3 DB of boost and then I'm gonna set that to about 1,400 Hertz and the low gain that was around 124 so set that around that same range and that was 4 DB of boost and then I had a cut at around hundred Hertz so we can mimic this same setting just using the vintage console EQ life or I I realize that so much when I first met you and that was some time ago but that into this and then I can pull down the output volume a bit here to match the input and output signal better let's try out the vintage tube EQ instead so I'm going to just kind of mimic those same settings as before so the top EQ is your high and low boost and also your high and low attenuation and then the bottom EQ is like your mid band so it's a little bit different to translate you know this into this I'm not going to use the high attenuation at all a low boost set that around 100 and then for my mid band I'll boost the high peak a bit and then set this well so it's a 1.5 cakes it's right around that range where we wanted that life for I realize that so much when I first met you cool it's giving it a lot more body let me give it a little bit more of a high frequency boost pull up the high bandwidth a bit life for a cool so the finish to be cue is giving the voice a bit more body and what you can do is if you really want to you can still go in here and use the channel EQ as sort of like a surgical EQ so this eq's for color but then the channel EQ is for more surgical things like adding in our high-pass filter here that this this EQ doesn't even have so maybe I'll give it a bit more air and the top-end but then I'm giving it body here in the vintage tube EQ life for I either life or I is a life for a now for compression I prefer to use two stages of lighter compression rather than one stage of heavy compression what I'll often do at the studio is when I'm working with hardware I'll use our la-2a optical compressor to compress the body of the sound and control sort of like the long dynamics and then we have a custom 1176 fet compressor that I'll use to control the quick front-end transients so what I'll do is I'll load up not one but two compressors just using logics compressor so for the first stage I'll use the vintage opto which is an optical modeling compressor it's the closest thing to like an la-2a model you're gonna get out of stock logic plugins and then for the second compressor I'm gonna use the studio FET which is gonna be the closest thing in logic that you're gonna get to an 1176 style so to start I'll just bypass the fet compressor and just work with the optical compressor now generally I don't mess around too much with the attack and release to start I'll put it on the audio release I want a slower attack time for this and that's the thing about optical compression it's very slow it's very slow acting on transients and that's why we use that's why I use two different stages one for the fast-acting stuff one for the slow stuff so I'm gonna let the opto compressor do it it does best life for I I realize that so much when I first met you and that was some time ago but that answer the resist said oh no no no no most of you so the la-2a and most la-2a modeling plug-ins like the VC 2a from soft tube and Native Instruments as well as the CLA 2a from wavez both of these have the ability to essentially high-pass the detection frequency for the compression so this doesn't high-pass the frequency that you're actually hearing it just high passes the detection signal the problem is that if you turn this off if you open this wide open you may end up with more compression when the singer is singing in their low range and less compression when the singer is singing in their high range so rolling in this high-pass filter for the detection frequency can help to give you a better balanced compression on vocals now if you want to mimic this same effect in logics stock compressor you can click on the sidechain button here go down to the sidechain filter click listen set the mode to high-pass and then dial in the frequency of the vocals that you actually want to affect the compression so really all I'm doing is I'm getting rid of signal in the sort of mid low range of the voice that I don't want to affect the compressor I realize that so much when I first met you and that was some time ago and then I can switch this from listen to on to hear the actual effect Iza life for I realize that so much when I first met you and that was some time ago but that into the recessed said oh no no no no close to you and you don't want to sweep this up really high like in you know I generally will keep it below 500 Hertz because then only the high frequencies are affecting the compression not the mid range so the mid range is really where the body is and that's what I want to trigger the compression alright so the body of the voice is sounding pretty good the problem is there's a lot of front-end transients still coming through so now I'm gonna kick in my studio fet compressor I'll stick this in graph mode so what I'll do is I'll roll the attack time all the way down for a really quick compression and then I'm gonna dial in just some very soft compression just to compress the front end transients of words and phrases also turn off the auto gain like I did before Iza life for I realize that so much when I first met you so you can see that it's really only acting on the peak transients in the recording it's not acting on the body the long notes too much you can try rolling back the ratio a bit and pulling the threshold up if you want an even softer effect life for so you can see most of the sustained tones are being left alone it's just the front end transients that are being compressed now if you want an even more balanced effect you can use the mix blend knob and each of these to blend the wet signal and the dry signal together so I'm gonna do a touch of that on both of these just to bring in a little bit of the original dry signal life for I realize that so much when I first met you Iza life for I realize that so much when I first met you Iza life for I I realize that so much when I first met you all right next up I've got the dsr up he's got a bit too much civilan saan his s consonant sound so I'm going to use logics new de-esser to to deal with this so a lot of the controls in here look really complicated but they really aren't really what I do is I just solo the cig the filtered signal so this is determining the detection frequency for the s sound so I typically will set this around 6000 on up because that's where most of the sibilants takes place [Music] and I like to use the actual shelf rather than the band and then what you can do is just adjust the threshold and the reduction the reduction is the max reduction you'll see a reduction meter coming down that's the amount of reduction and then this is the maximum reduction allowed life for I I realize that so much when I first met you and that was some time ago but that into the recessed said oh no no no no close to you so here I've set the maximum reduction around 3 dB next I want to control some of the background noise in between phrases as well as the breaths now typically for breaths I use isotopes rx-7 D breath or plugin it's really useful for removing or reducing breaths in a vocal recording there really isn't anything like that in logic for a stock plugin so you can use the noise gate to sort of get rid of some breaths but if you use logics noise gate I don't recommend putting it after your compression I recommend putting it before your compression and the reason why is those breaths and is recording are going to get compressed and boosted and leveled and everything along with everything else in the vocal recording so they can be really difficult to remove if you put the noise gate after the compression and that was some time ago but that answer the resist said oh no no no no close to you see oh yes right from the start I said oh no no no I could never part yeah yeah I hear from your thigh I wanna live in your house I wanna live in your house I wanna live in your ass your house why not levy the promise if I set the threshold too high it's gonna start cutting out actual vocal signal so a workaround I found for this is the breaths that are kind of stronger like this one here what you can do is sort of manually cut them out with your marquee tool don't delete them but just pull the gain down on them and then they'll stay below the threshold for the noise gate and then you just pull the reduction up to a more reasonable amount so it just reduces the breath but doesn't actually completely gate it out hear from you so here's another one pull that down quite a bit and here's another one I'll pull that down quite a bit I wanna livvie your house I wanna levy so it's quite a tedious process but it all depends on the music too you know some music depending on the genre the breaths aren't really gonna matter too much having the breaths in there you know give it an element of realism whereas if it's like a pop track or an electronic track with vocals on it you might want to get rid of all of that background noise just by going through and editing it all out if you don't have a plug-in like you know rx sevens deep breath or that I used in my other video now for time-based effects I generally like to have some sort of like a doubling or slap back effect along with reverb so on my first effects end here I'll use the tape delay plug-in so typically what I'll do with this is I'll take it out of tempo sync mode and I'll set the delay time to something really short like something under 30 or 40 milliseconds so it's a really short slapback just make sure that your dry signals all the way down since you're using this on an aux Channel and then what I'll do is I'll filter out some of the doubling effect and then I'll spread it as well so I get like a nice stereo effect that you can also add modulation down here so it adds a bit of like a pitch effect I said oh no no no I could never part yeah then I'll roll back the send because I don't want to hear that much I just want it to be like a I just wanted to be like a slight thickening effect I said oh no no no I could never part yeah and then on a second effect sent here I'll just add space designer space designer is a great convolution reverb there's tons of different reverb tones in here one of the ones I like in particular that's to go really nice just starting point for vocals is the bright vocal preset under small spaces for vocals I'm a big fan of using plate reverb Zhai just like the way they sound more so than room or Hall reverbs and again I'll just pull back the senso don't have too much of that reverb in there I said oh no no no I could never part yeah yeah alright so play this whole thing back with and without the effects with just the voice so load and I'll play it with the music in I said oh no no no I could never part yeah yeah oh I hear from your thigh I said oh no no no I could never part yeah oh I hear from your thigh I wanna live in your house I wanna live in your house I wanna live in your house your house wanna live in your hour I said oh no no no I could never part yeah yeah oh I hear from your thigh I said oh no no no I could never part I hear from you all right so that's my method of mixing vocals with only stock plugins in Logic Pro 10 now keep in mind a lot of tweaking can go into this each singer is different and each recording is different and each recording will require some different settings so think of this more as a starting point not something that's going to immediately work for all vocals if you want to get your hands on this plug-in chain I'll leave a link in the video description below so you can download this if you liked the video please leave it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel to see more content like this you can also check me out on social media at Facebook Twitter Instagram as well as patreon if you'd like to make a monthly donation to the channel thanks to the support and thanks for watching

Channel: MusicTechHelpGuy

Views: 214,466

Keywords: vocal, mixing, logic pro x, mix vocals in logic, studio, compressor, eq, mix vocals, mix, gate, deesser, how to mix vocals in logic, musictechhelpguy, music tech help guy

Id: X9fxPjdn__o

Length: 20min 22sec (1222 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 21 2019