MIX YOUR VOCALS - How to use volume AUTOMATION

hey what's up guys a crystal limb here and today I have something very special for you some of you have to ask me to do some videos on mixing vocals and this is what I'm gonna do today actually even better I am starting a new series gonna be like a six-part video series on mixing vocals and this one is called mix your vocals and this is episode number one [Music] now throughout this series we're going to talk about automation a compression EQ delay saturation reverb and so on but for this first episode of mixer vocals we're gonna cover automation but first if you're new here on this channel consider subscribing and click that notification bells so you don't miss anything and for all of you please share and like this video alright so let's jump in alright so now let's have a quick listen to the mix we're gonna be working on today [Music] [Music] all right so this is a song from myself my good friend Jaime and her ex viras OSA who is the lead vocal on this track we did the production of that that song maybe five years ago so I decided to just bring back the the tracks remakes the entire thing and maybe add a few a few keyboards and stuff like that and now I'm just remaking the song and I'm almost done with the mix but not quite yet now my vocal mix is again almost done but I still have some tweaking to do but it gives you a good idea on where I'm going with this um so now let's go back to the beginning of that vocal mix and I'm gonna show you step by step what I did to get to the point that I am right now now what I usually do when I start to work with a vocal is to do volume automation and the goal is very very simple the reason why I do so is to avoid having too much of a dynamic signal going into the first compressor sometimes you don't need to do much but in some other cases you need to work a lot more to get a more stable and more leveled out signal before hitting the compressor this way your vocal will sit better in the mix and compression will sound more smooth and natural so this is why I use volume automation before hitting the first compressor now you're gonna ask me why don't you use the regular channels fader to do so now using the channels fader is something I do at the end of the mix okay when I'm done with all my my plugins my insert and sense effects and then afterwards I do some I can do some tweaks by adding some automation directly on the channels fader but before I get to this point when I start it is way better to do this before you hit the first plugin in your chain because using the channels mixer will automate the entire signal path of your track and this is not what I want to automate right now so let's go into the inserts and I'm going to show you three different things you can do here to automate your the level of your vocals before heading the first compressor so first you can use a plug-in like the waves vocal rider that I have right here this is a plugin that I work with when I need to and it works very well very very simple to use what it does is automatically it does ride the fader for you so let's have a quick listen and look home how vocal rider reacts to what I have here according to the settings I have set up on the plug-in itself [Music] okay now I'm not gonna do a tutorial on this plugin but it's only to show you how that plugin works once you're happy with your your vocal writer settings you can print you can write the automation directly on your on your automation lanes so there you go this is what I did here and if I just click on read' and click on the read on the plug-in itself this is what I'm gonna get [Music] okay so it did some automation directly on the automation lane so this is one way you can do so by using a plugin like vocal rider from waves now another very cool way you can do this in Cubase anyways and probably in some other DW is to do it manually directly within your DAW so I am gonna select in the automation Lane the input filter section there's a pre gain automation option here that you can you can select from and this will give you access to the pre gain of your channel okay so you can automate the pre gain of this channel so if I click here on the the channel settings of my vocal tract I see here D gain here which is the pre gain level and this is what I want to automate so I'm just gonna bring this larger and I'm gonna listen to what I have I'm gonna dis activate a vocal rider and the check I think on this part we have some Peaks that I want to work on okay so let's have a quick listen [Music] just gonna bring the vocal louder so we can hear it better okay the word out is a bit louder than what follows and same for the next one the next word get the know of its no intentional kid no is again Peaks a bit more than the rest so we're gonna just level balance that by selecting the arranged selection tool I'm gonna go down to my input pre gain automation Lane click on read' and there you go I already did some some automation right here so I'm just gonna remove what I did and redo this with you guys so by selecting the arrangement selection tool I can just directly on the automation Lane select the the part I want to lower down and just go on top and bring this down that's simple I'm going do the same for this parts and let's have a quick listen to what we have [Music] okay that's way better maybe a bit too much so I'm just gonna bring that back just a bit okay now the no from no intention is way more balanced okay so this is the kind of stuff I do in this case now you can also work directly on the events if you wish to in case so let's have a quick listen here okay so let's do the same here I'm gonna click on the arrange a selection tool select that part that I want to lower down click on shift and X that will split a dis election into its own event and I can just select it and bring it down okay that's simple okay now the pre the entire pre-chorus is louder and I already brought it down originally this is what it it sounded like okay so I just selected the entire thing and brought everything down [Music] okay and if you notice right below okay if we go back to my pregame automation right here I did some some automation on the second line right here the I was pretty loud and the see was like not well-balanced level wise so I did bring it up quite a bit and now it sounds way more balanced so this is how I manage automation before compression now I don't go super crazy about this I just fixed the major problems before my signal hits the compressor the compressor will still do some some dynamic control but it's gonna sound way more smooth and more natural so I hope that was helpful if you have any comments or questions please leave everything down below and don't forget to share to like and to subscribe to this channel if you're new here don't forget to join me on the second part of this video series mixer vocals see you then you you

Channel: Chris Selim - Mixdown Online

Views: 23,706

Keywords: audio, audio engineering, audio mixing, chris selim, cubase, cubase 9, cubase pro, home studios, mixing audio, mixing tip, music, steinberg, Mix your vocals, how to mix your vocals, how to get your vocals to sit perfectly in your mix, how to make your vocals cut through the mix, how to make your vocals sit in the mix, Mix vocals in Cubase, mixing vocals, vocal automation, volume automation, fl studio, hip hop

Id: vEiX0eXE84Q

Length: 9min 51sec (591 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 18 2018