Hey there, my name is Geoff Manchester from iZotope, and in this video I'm going to be covering vocal mixing. Lead vocals, background
vocals, panning structure, we're gonna be using
tools like Nectar, RX, bit of Neutron, VocalSynth, R4 and Nimbus, two new reverbs to the Izotope family. The track that we're using
is called "What About Me", and it's by Lilah, check it out. ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about trust ♪ ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about love ♪ -So the first thing, we are in Pro Tools, you do not have to be to follow along. You can replicate anything that I'm doing in your DAW of choice, whether it's Live, Reaper, Logic, Cubase, FL, you name it. Now the first thing I
recommend that anyone does, when anyone is about to mix
anything, especially a vocal. Is to listen, to the vocal. I know it's tempting to
jump in and add compression and bells and whistles,
but doing a critical listening pass, keeping
a pad and pen nearby. Take down notes for things that you might wanna explore later
on, when you're mixing. But also listen for issues or problems that might have been introduced
at the tracking stage. Stuff that might have gotten picked up by the microphone in the room, or things like the by products
of a vocal performance. So mouth clicks, plosives,
that kinda stuff. If you don't take care of that stuff now, it'll come up in level
once you add compression, limiting, saturation, and besides, we want to be mixing, when we're mixing. In a mixing mindset, we
don't wanna be repairing. So I took a critical
listen here to several of the key vocal tracks and
noticed a couple things. Let's see if you can hear what I heard. I'm gonna zoom in here and
turn off the processing on one of these important
vocals, the pre-chorus vox. And let's see if you'll
notice what I noticed. ♪ Waking in the morning ♪ ♪ I'm thinking 'bout you ♪ ♪ Losing more sleep ♪ ♪ As I ♪ - Did you catch it? It's a mouth click. And this happens a lot when singers are doing a lotta takes. They might be dehydrated. Or the microphone just
might be like a large diaphragm condenser and
just pick up all that stuff. Now, getting back to what I said earlier. When you add processing
and boost the level, all the problems get boosted. Not just the tonal stuff, the voice, but also the noise. So I brought some signal processing in now listen to how much
louder that click is. ♪ Waking in the morning ♪ ♪ I'm thinking 'bout you ♪ ♪ Losing more sleep ♪ - Now you might think, Geoff,
you're soloing the vocal. You're not gonna be
able to hear that click once everything else comes in. So let's un-solo the vocal, and you'll see how it makes it through. ♪ Waking in the morning ♪ ♪ I'm thinking 'bout you ♪ ♪ Losing more sleep ♪ - All right, so some
people, some listeners are very, let's just
say, emotionally allergic to mouth sounds and clicks. And they might skip your songs, so we have to deal with this. There's a couple ways to do it. I could throw a realtime
plugin on the track. We make a tool called
Mouth De-click in RX, and I can bring that
in at the insert level right here in Pro Tools. But I actually prefer to take the vocal out of Pro Tools, bring
it into the standalone audio editor in RX to see if there's other things that I'm noticing in the vocal. 'Cause right now, I'm in a mixing mindset. I wanna be in a repair mindset, if I'm repairing stuff. And there could be things I'm missing just because I'm focused on
getting this track mixed. So the easiest way to
take this out of Pro Tools and into RX, is to click
here, head to AudioSuite, go to iZotope Inc. And then RX7 connect. We're gonna ferry the audio
out of Pro Tools, into RX. Like this, on a repair trip. So we'll send that, and now it'll be taken into RX, where we can repair
stuff with just one track. Now for those new to RX, it's a bit like a photo
editor for your audio. If you can see something,
you can get rid of it. Now time goes left to right in RX, frequency, bottom to top, and brightness corresponds to amplitude, so louder things are gonna be a little brighter in the spectrogram view, which
is what we're seeing now. But of course we can go the
the waveform view, like this. Which you guys might be familiar with, or the spectrogram view
which I think gives you a lot more information to work with. Especially when repairing stuff. So let's listen here for those clicks, and I can actually see them here, 'cause I spend a lotta time in RX. Going like little slivers of orange here. Have a listen. ♪ Waking in the morning ♪ ♪ I'm thinking 'bout you ♪ ♪ Losing more sleep ♪ - [Geoff] And by the way, little icons, little images here will tell
you what kind of problem that the module's going to solve. So if you're new to RX and
you're wondering what do I use? The little icon is a
pretty good indicator. So go to Mouth De-click, click that open. Let's just go with the
default settings here. Hit render, and right away,
again RX is super visual. We see those little slivers gone. And by the way, if you still can't hear the mouth clicks after
all the demonstrations, if I hit output clicks
only and press preview. It's gonna tell me just what
the module is listening to. So I can press preview, now
that that box is ticked. And now we should just hear the clicks. So now you'll definitely hear them. (clicking) So there we go. Selection, hit render and they're gone. So here is the before. ♪ Morning I'm thinking 'bout you ♪ ♪ Losing ♪ - [Geoff] Here's after. ♪ Morning I'm thinking 'bout you ♪ ♪ Losing more ♪ - [Geoff] Now I'm a little superstitious. If the clicks were here,
they're probably elsewhere in this file, so I can
either hit Command A and select everything, or
if I deselect everything, RX will assume I want
the entire audio event to be processed, so either
way you're good to go. I'm just gonna hit render,
it's gonna go through the entire file and automatically, and super transparently get rid
of all and any mouth clicks. Remember what I said earlier, when you're in a repair mindset, you're just thinking differently. And in this environment I can see a bit more clearly too. I'm seeing some little bursts here, remember amplitude
corresponds to brightness. So this might be a loud
thing on the low end of this vocal that I
may wanna take care of and it's probably a P pop, or a plosive. That's when air hits the
capsule of the microphone. With a word with the letter
B or P or cha or pah, something like that. So let's go in. Let's have a listen, see what that is. ♪ Talk to me different ♪ ♪ Prep my position ♪ ♪ I'm ready to listen ♪ - Okay, so not terribly offensive. ♪ To me different ♪ ♪ Prep my position ♪ - But for me, on that "position" at 208, I'm gonna wanna get rid of that, 'cause that's gonna hit my compressor. ♪ To me different ♪ ♪ Prep my position ♪ - And I don't want it to. So I'll make a selection, go to De-plosive, again little icon, with that little burst of air. Let's just go for the default settings. Done. Before. ♪ Talk to me different ♪ ♪ Prep my position ♪ - [Geoff] After. ♪ Talk to me different ♪ ♪ Prep my position ♪ - [Geoff] Gets rid of the plosive, keeps the integrity of the word, we don't lose any articulation. We're good to go. Now remember, this is a round trip thing. I wanted to bring it out of Pro Tools, into RX, send it back into Pro Tools. To do that, I just go
Send Back, right here. And now it will be taken back into the Digital Audio Workstation, and it says Hit Render
to commit the changes. I will do that. So I'm printing my changes that I made in RX, onto the track. And now that we've repaired things, we can move on to mixing,
and be in a mixing mindset. (echoing low whine) The next thing we're gonna talk about is vocal mixing and vocal
chains and signal processing on these three, very important vocals, the pre-chorus vox, the pre-chorus echo, and the chorus vocals. My goal, when it comes
to lead vocal processing is to smooth, shape and
soften as much as possible. What do I mean by that? Level-wise, I wanna use
tools, if I have to, like compression to make sure that we have a smooth level, loudness-wise
across the vocal. I do welcome dynamics in vocals and this vocal is certainly dynamic. But I'm gonna be using tools to make sure that we maintain a pretty consistent level and that the quiet parts in Lilah's vocal are maybe not right as
loud as the loudest ones. But that there isn't
too much of a difference between those two, because we need to hear all the words, in the midst
of this kind of busy mix, where there's a lot of other things competing for our attention. I also wanna smooth out
and control for tone. And by this I mean I wanna
take care of sibilance. Strongly stressed consonants. I wanna take care of
any resonant frequencies that might be annoying to the listener. Especially as I bring the
level of the vocal up, with other processing, so those are the two things I'm looking to do. Let's jump into how I processed the main pre-chorus vox, and I'm using
Nectar here, at the top. Nectar for those who don't know, is a Swiss Army knife
for vocal processing. It has everything, delay, reverb, EQ, compression, saturation, a pitch module to give you some auto tuning effects. But I'm using, here at the top, by the way it's resizable, I'll drag it like this. I'm using an EQ. And this is to control for that tonal stuff that I mentioned. And the great thing about Nectar is, a lot of these nodes, you can assign different behavior to, to
suppress tonal imbalances. So for this one, on node two, you'll see that when I play this track, it's attached itself to a harmonic that I found to be kind of annoying. And it will follow it, wherever it goes. Take a listen, and have a look. ♪ Feeling reunited ♪ ♪ Options to be chosen ♪ ♪ Devotion can be broken ♪ - [Geoff] I can make it
static if I just click here. And then uncheck this frequency icon. ♪ Feeling reunited ♪ ♪ Options to be chosen ♪ - [Geoff] Now that's not bad, but I wanna make sure that I'm attaching this node so that it follows it throughout the course of the performance. And if I want to, I can
bring it and attach it to another harmonic, so watch this. ♪ Feeling reunited ♪ - [Geoff] Drag it over here. ♪ Options to be chosen ♪ - [Geoff] Or to this one. ♪ Devotion can be broken ♪ - [Geoff] All I'm doing is
moving it left to right. ♪ We were fighting ♪ ♪ Flames ♪ - [Geoff] That's the first thing, I'm also doing a high-pass, right here. Just to cut out some mud. And I'm doing a little
dip here at about one K. And I feel like the
combination of these moves is going a long way in reducing the level of that kind of tonal stuff that I don't really like, frequency-wise. It was sticking out in my ears. Let's do a little before and after. ♪ Feeling reunited ♪ ♪ Options to be chosen ♪ ♪ Devotion ♪ ♪ Feeling reunited ♪ ♪ Options to be chosen ♪ ♪ Devotion can be broken ♪ - All right, so next up is the compressor. I'm using it in Vintage mode, there's a couple different algorithms, optical, solid-state, digital. I just like the sound of the Vintage mode. And a great thing about this compressor is it's super visual. So I can see the gain trace of the signal, before and after I compressed it. Before, it's that light gray, kinda ghosty gray color. And after is this white
outline gain trace here. ♪ We were fighting ♪ - And this is just making sure that we are suppressing. ♪ Fuel to the fire ♪ - Any little spikes in her dynamic vocal. And putting it into a suitcase. We gotta kinda make everything
fit and frame the vocal. So that's what the compressor's doing. Now next up is saturation. And this is just adding some
lovely harmonic information. I'm using the Tape algorithm. Let's have a listen to that. ♪ Feeling ♪ - [Geoff] I'll stop talking and do a before and after in a moment. As I play this, we can see where some of the saturation's
being concentrated, here at six K. There's little flares showing up. And some excitement in
the bottom end as well. Let me do a little before and after. ♪ Feeling reunited ♪ ♪ Options to be chosen ♪ ♪ Feeling reunited ♪ ♪ Options to be chosen ♪ ♪ Devotion can be broken ♪ ♪ Feeling ♪ - Now you'll notice
that I didn't add any EQ after I did the subtractive EQ. And that's because I found that saturation was giving me the kind of tonal boost that I wanted from an EQ, but just in a different tool. And that was a choice
that I made, as the mixer. I just didn't feel I needed to brighten anything up with an EQ, with a shelf or something like that. And it's giving me what I want, I'm happy with it. And we've got the amount
here, to about 78%. And just so you know, any module in Nectar we can bring in, in a
parallel kind of way. So just bring in some of the
wet signal against the dry. We don't have to have it
all the way to a 100%, so I can bring this in at a
very conservative level here. Or at a very liberal
level, all the way up. Let's have a listen to
what that sounds like 'cause we introduced the
wet into the dry here. ♪ Feeling reunited ♪ ♪ Options to be chosen ♪ ♪ Devotion can be broken ♪ - Now remember, we're still controlling across the line for tonal imbalances. And that's what the De-esser is doing. This is not a very sibilant vocal, but I like to have this here, just to soften Ss wherever I hear them. Now let me use a little example here where I thought it came in pretty handy on this line, I'll turn it off. ♪ Devotion ♪ - It's on the "devotion",
not too sibilant, by sibilant I mean strongly stressed consonants, sss, shh, that kinda thing. But listen to once we
bring in the De-esser. ♪ Devotion ♪ ♪ Devotion ♪ - It just softens that S and makes it a bit more palatable for the ear. And of course for the rest
of the Ss in this track, it'll be suppressing it in the same way. And if you wanna know if
you're in the right ballpark, with your De-esser settings, hit this little ear icon. And this is a bit like Output Clicks Only, like we did in the last segment with RX. This will show you just what
the De-esser is listening to. So let's have a listen to that. (hissing) So it's just picking up the sibilance. Now it's a good way to let you know if you've gone too far. If I pull the threshold down too much, I guarantee we're gonna start hearing the articulation of words, and consonants and things that we don't want. (partial words hissing) - So you can already
hear the kind of essence of the word "devotion" there. And that's because the
threshold's down too far or attacking stuff that we shouldn't be. Let's bring it back to where it's only
picking up the sibilants. (audio bits hissing) Perfect, so now we're
not attenuating anything but the sibilance there. And the last thing I
have here, is a reverb. I'm just kissing it with reverb. And the mix is very low here and that's because I'm sending this out to another reverb. But I just like to have
a bit of reverb on it at a certain level, just to
soften things a little bit more. Let's hear what that sounds like. It's probably gonna be very subtle. ♪ Feeling reunited ♪ ♪ Options to be chosen ♪ ♪ Devotion can be broken ♪ - So you'll probably need
headphones to hear that, it's super subtle, but
it just gives the vocal a bit of a sheen. Now the next thing is
the ALM, Auto Level Mode. Really handy but kind of
unsung little processor here in Nectar. What this is gonna do is
additional level adjustment for me. And make sure that my
vocal is always hugging about minus eight RMS, and
just kinda staying there. And this is to make sure
that the quiet words are as loud or articulate, if you will, as the loud words. And let's turn this on and off, as we go through the track here. Turn it off, the little
diamond disappears. Turn it on, the diamond appears so. ♪ Options to be chosen ♪ ♪ Devotion can be broken ♪ ♪ We were fighting ♪ ♪ Flames adding fuel to the fire ♪ - So it just lifts the level a little bit and keeps it there. And it's another way that I'm controlling the level through compression, and now with the Auto Level Mode engaged. And I have a limiter
here just as a safety. To make sure if she gets
a bit too hot, level-wise. We're protecting against
that kind of overage. (echoing low whine) So I know that what I have here might be challenging for
someone who's new to mixing. You might be wondering,
well that's all very fine, but how do I set up my chain? That's kind of, I wouldn't
know where to start. And there is a solution for you. And it's called Vocal Assistant. In fact how I got this chain set up, was through that same process. So let me open another Nectar. So now this is a brand new nectar, I've turned the other one off. And you'll see that we have this tool called Vocal Assistant. I'll click that and now it says, I'll listen to your audio and create a custom present to fit
your vocal in the mix. I'll check this box, press Next. All you have to do is choose a Vibe. Vintage, modern, maybe
this is for YouTube, or a podcast, just choose Dialogue. And in Intensity, so how
hard do you wanna make the processing move to
conform to one of the Vibes. I'll go with moderate. And what's gonna happen when I hit Next is Nectar's gonna go through and listen to this vocal, and assign EQ
nodes, compression parameters. It's gonna listen
automatically for sibilants and assign the De-esser
to target that area. And give you basically a starting point. It's like having an engineer
sitting next to you, going maybe try this, here's a suggestion. And you can take it, or leave it, you could tweak it, add more modules. It's totally up to you. But it's a really great way to get started with not just a preset,
but a custom preset that is listening to what's on your track. So let's run it, and
let's get it over a loop that has some sibilance here. All we have to do is
press Next, and hit Play. ♪ Chosen ♪ ♪ Devotion can be broken ♪ - [Geoff] So it's going to go through and perform all these tasks and tell you what it's doing, as it does it. ♪ Can be broken ♪ ♪ To be chosen ♪ ♪ Devotion can be broken ♪ ♪ To be chosen ♪ ♪ Devotion can be broken ♪ ♪ To be chosen ♪ ♪ Devotion can be broken ♪ - So if we go to Accept here, We can see this custom
chain's set up for us. Starting with an EQ, and
then doing some De-essing. Another EQ, a compressor
and then some reverb. It's not too far off
from the one that I had, if you remember. Let's bring them side by side. I just made a couple different choices. So we started with an EQ. Have an EQ, we have a compressor. Compressor, I added saturation, but the De-esser's there, so is the reverb, and the
Auto Level Mode is engaged. So this goes a long way
to getting you started when you're figuring out
what should I do first. Compress, EQ, et cetera. (echoing low whine) Once you've taken care of
smoothing and softening and just ironing out the creases in the vocals, so to speak, it's important to make sure that it pops in the context of the entire session. And one of the ways we do that is by thinking about a
concept called masking. And this is when you
have things overlapping, frequency-wise, and
things are gonna be lost in the mix when that happens. It's bit like a group photo
where everyone is standing in front of each other,
you're not gonna see everyone. Some things are gonna have to move, people are gonna have to sit
down, or kneel or whatever. So that everyone can be seen. And the same is true of
mixing, especially vocals. We wanna make sure that the
vocal is in the photograph. So to speak, so a great way to make sure that your vocal sticks out, is to control for any masking that might be happening between it and another
track that has similar frequency content, in the
range that your vocal is in. So I've identified this Rhodes here, as being pretty mid-rangy, and my vocal's pretty mid-rangy, so I wanna make sure that these two aren't masking each other. And that the Rhodes, the keys track here isn't louder then my
vocal, I don't want that. So what I have to do now,
is to go back to my Nectar, and you'll see that if
you go to Vocal Assistant, there's this unmask option, and it says I'll carve out space for the vocal by comparing it to another audio track and correcting frequency masking. So I'll press Next, and we
have to choose a source. Where's the masking
coming from, it's asking. Now because of a protocol, called inter-plugin communication I can talk to other iZotope
plugins in this session without having to go
to them and click them and turn them on, I can
do it right from this dropdown display, and what's the track that we had earlier? It was a Rhodes, so I'll
go find Rhodes here. And the reason it shows up here, is because I have a relay on
the Rhodes track, right here. And it's called Rhodes relay, but we can call it Rhodes
relay vocal mix, for example. And if I go back to Nectar
on that pre-chorus vox, right there, relay vocal mix. So what I'm doing is I'm saying, hey, I think this track, this
Rhodes is masking my vocal. So all I have to do is press Next. I'm gonna solo them to
make it super obvious what's happening here,
press Next, play some audio. It's gonna listen and then correct for any masking that it might perceive. ♪ Can be broken ♪ ♪ We were fighting ♪ ♪ Flames adding fuel to the fire ♪ - Now let's go back to the relay because now we'll see this
unmasking pre-chorus vox here. So what it's done is it's said, the vocal is the star of the show, I'm gonna listen for masking and then introduce an EQ that will push down any frequencies that are getting in the way
of it's intelligibility, of the vocal's intelligibility. So when I click this on and off, we should hear the vocal pop a bit more. Because the Rhodes has been attenuated in the area where it might
have been masking our vocal. So have a listen as I go
before and after here. ♪ Can be broken ♪ ♪ We were fighting ♪ ♪ Flames adding fuel to the fire ♪ ♪ Praying, hoping ♪ ♪ God come and save us I'm hopeless ♪ - So hopefully you can hear that. Get some good monitors, turn them on or get some good headphones. 'Cause it's subtle, but we don't want to get rid of the Rhodes completely, we just want it to get
out of the vocal's way and that's what it's doing. One more time, hear how
the vocal just pops, especially outta that mid range. But we still keep the
soul of the Rhodes track. ♪ Can be broken ♪ ♪ We were fighting ♪ ♪ Flames adding fuel to the fire ♪ ♪ Praying, hoping ♪ ♪ God come and save us I'm hopeless ♪ - So I'm gonna leave that on. And there we go, we
just unmasked the track with very little effort. Now there's one more
thing I wanna talk about with the pre-chorus vocal, and that's what I'm sending it to here. We see bus seven, bus nine and 10. On bus seven I have a vocal compressor that I'm sending to, and it is the Ozone Vintage compressor. You might be wondering Geoff, you have Auto Level Mode, you
have the compressor on Nectar, why is there another compressor here? And I find that once you
control for level fluctuations with those tools, the Auto
Level Mode and the compressor, you can add other compressors, not necessarily as additional,
dynamic range controllers, but just as things give
you a different color for the vocal, and different vibe. And this is a Vintage compressor, it has a sound to it that I really like. And it's also helping the vocal pop and be more articulate. I'm just sending a little
bit of level to it, let's have a listen in the mix to what it brings to Lilah's vocal. Gonna turn it off and turn it on. ♪ Feeling reunited ♪ ♪ Options to be chosen ♪ ♪ Devotion can be broken ♪ ♪ We were fighting ♪ ♪ Flames adding fuel to the fire ♪ ♪ Praying ♪ - So again, it just has
a sound that I like, I went with forward mid
range as the preset here. And it just worked for what I was doing and there's no more rhyme
nor reason to it then that. The next thing we have
here is bus nine and 10. And where's that going to? Nine and 10 is Nimbus,
now Nimbus an incredible reverb from Exponential Audio which is now in iZotope company. And if you're a little taken aback if you've never seen this before, there's a lot of parameters and controls in this tool, but it's
really easy to search for something that you want. Depending on the activity that you're pursuing in your mix. If you're mixing vocals,
go to the keywords, hit vocal, and then you
will see that we have hundreds of presets, in fact
if you go to all presets here, and now you can see
that there's thousands. And this is just a good way to start. Go with a preset, tweak it from there. You can even do a bit of a
Google search if you will. And just type in vocal. And then everything,
vocal-wise will come up and that's what I did, I went to vocal, and then I went to Tiny
Vocal, Play It Dark. And this is just giving me
a flavor that I really like. This kind of a rapped vocal, so I don't wanna add too much reverb, but I do wanna polish
it and just lift it up with a little bit of time-based effects. The effect might be subtle, but let's do a little before and after here on the send, so you can hear what Nimbus is bringing to the table. ♪ Reunited ♪ ♪ Options to be chosen ♪ ♪ Devotion can be broken ♪ ♪ We were fighting ♪ ♪ Flames adding fuel to the fire ♪ ♪ Praying, hoping ♪ ♪ God come and save us I'm hopeless ♪ - The other thing I just
wanna say real quick it that this is a dark reverb, and by dark, we're pulling out some of the high end, frequency-wise from the early reflections. And we're also pulling
out some of the high end from the reverb tail. I find that nowadays there's
a lot of darker reverbs in modern music, like
The Weeknd and stuff. We don't get these splashy
bright tails anymore from reverb, so you can go in and control the extent to which the
high end makes it into those two aspects of
the reverberant signal, right here, very easily,
or just for the word D-R-K, dark, next to whatever
preset you're using. And I just find this fits in with the vibe of the song, and the vibe
of a lotta music today. Let's go the the pre-chorus echos. And these guys are just
complimenting Lilah's vocal. ♪ We were undivided ♪ ♪ Feeling reunited ♪ - [Geoff] Here they are in the track. ♪ We were undivided ♪ ♪ Feeling reunited ♪ - So pretty simple here, we have Nectar, we're
just doing a high pass on this track, just to cut out some of the fundamental frequency. I don't want too much
articulation from this track. The real star of the show
is the pre-chorus vox. I am sending it to echo effects here, and on that bus, pretty wet is R4, and this is the kind
of more musical reverb compared to Nimbus, which
is very clean and digital. This one's a bit more
analog style and lush. And classic back hall, preset
Vintage was the keyword that I searched from,
and again we're doing a dark reverb here. And I just find that it just
fits again with the vibe. Let's do a before and after on that. ♪ Feeling reunited ♪ ♪ Options ♪ - Let's bring it in. ♪ We were undivided ♪ ♪ Feeling reunited ♪ ♪ Options to be chosen ♪ - So it just gives us a good vibe I think. And also I'm bringing up
the tail width to wide here. Turn the tool tips on by the way, if you wanna know what any
of these parameters do. So as I bring it to wide, it'll tell me that it'll control the width of the reverb effect, but also make sure you're not going too crazy, when you go down to mono, that things don't collapse too much. But I just like the sound
of the wide tail width, and so that's why I have it
all the way to the right there. Let's keep moving to the next vocal, which is the chorus. ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about trust ♪ ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about love ♪ - As I open this up,
you'll see that all I did was actually just copy
and paste my settings from the pre-chorus vox,
onto the chorus vox. Doing the same moves,
compressor, saturation, reverb, we're sending
them to the same sends that Vintage compressor from Ozone, sending it to Nimbus,
and there's a tape delay which I'll talk a little
bit about at the end. But basically I'm giving
it the same treatment that I would the other lead tracks, but the pre-chorus vox. All right, now before we
jump into background vocals and panning structure and special effects. Let's just do a little before and after to see the difference that Nectar, Nimbus and R4 make to the overall composition of these important lead vocals. So I'll turn everything off, and then turn everything on. Let's start with everything off. All the Nectars, all the buses. ♪ We were undivided ♪ ♪ Feeling reunited ♪ ♪ Options to be chosen ♪ ♪ Devotion can be broken ♪ - [Geoff] And here's the chorus. ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about trust ♪ ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ - [Geoff] All right so
it sounds like somebody in front of a microphone. Not very exciting. And here things are with the effects in. ♪ We were undivided ♪ ♪ Feeling reunited ♪ ♪ Options to be chosen ♪ ♪ Devotion can be broken ♪ - [Geoff] Here's the chorus. ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about trust ♪ ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about love ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What if I leave ♪ (echoing low whine) - [Geoff] All right, let's talk about the all important background vocals and how to pan them. 'Cause I know that comes up a lot. People are wondering where
should they pan things in the stereo field, and also
how should they process them. So let's cover those
two important questions. So there's a lot of background vocals, maybe not as much as you get
in a much larger session. This is, I think a manageable amount. So I'm happy about that. We have Nectar on these tracks. You'll also notice that
we have relay again, making an appearance, and
we'll cut to that in a minute. So I'm using Nectar here, and we're not doing too much crazy stuff. A high pass and we're
also gonna boost here to brighten things up
with an analog high shelf that's consistent across the
other background vocals too, with the exception of the one
that I have VocalSynth on. So EQ, compressor, and
then this dimension module follows too, and let's have a listen to this track here, before
and after I added Nectar. So here's before, let's
turn the verb off as well. Talk more about the verb in a moment. ♪ We were fighting ♪ ♪ To the fire ♪ ♪ Praying ♪ - So here is Nectar in
the background, to verb. ♪ We were fighting ♪ ♪ To the fire ♪ ♪ Praying ♪ ♪ God come and save us I'm hopeless ♪ - So you might notice there's
a kind of flanging effect. I really like that on background vocals and sometimes on lead vocals. Just to give the ear
something to, (laughs) I don't know, get excited by. So if I go to Nectar 3, I've got the EQ, the compressor,
and this dimension module we've got chorus, flanger and phaser. There are essentially time-based effects. And we hear them a lot in certain genres and with certain acts, certainly. Someone Tame Impala we might hear them on. It just gives something
different about them it also helps to smooth them out, I find. A lot of people like to
throw chorus on guitars, 'cause it just helps them breath in a mix. Same thing with background vocals, I find. Let's do a little before and after with the dimension modules. Probably gonna be subtle. ♪ We were fighting ♪ ♪ To the fire ♪ ♪ Praying ♪ ♪ God come and save us I'm hopeless ♪ ♪ We were fighting ♪ ♪ To the fire ♪ - So I just find that
it's smooths things out. There's something about it that gives it a airy kind of vibe and feel and it's all about just what sounds good and what feels good,
after you've controlled again for the tonal and level
irregularities if you will. So I've added the chorus onto most of these background tracks. I just like the way it sounds. They're going to a background verb, which is being sent out from this bus. And what's on the background verb? R4, light vocal touch. We've talked about this plugin before and it's cousin Nimbus, so I'll just close this. And let's talk about panning, 'cause there's two vocals here that join right before we hit the chorus. ♪ We were fighting ♪ ♪ Fighting ♪ ♪ Flames adding fuel to the fire ♪ ♪ To the fire ♪ ♪ Praying ♪ ♪ Praying ♪ ♪ Hoping hoping ♪ ♪ God come and save us I'm hopeless ♪ - And here they are in the mix. ♪ We were fighting ♪ ♪ Flames adding fuel to the fire ♪ ♪ Praying hoping ♪ ♪ God come and save us I'm hopeless ♪ ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ - Let's get back to why the
relays are on these tracks. They're on the tracks
because they're sending information again through
inter-plugin communication, to another tool from
iZotope that I really like, called the Visual Mixer,
which is on the master bus. So, you'll notice in the visual mixer we
have left to right panning. So left and right. And gain is up and down here. So we have minus 60 dB and plus 10 dB. And right now, my relays are right here. Again we're sharing
information across plugins. And this is like a sound
stage for your mix. Where you can position
things in the stereo field as opposed to going to the
fader and turning it up and then turning the pan potentiometer to the left or the right. You can just assign the vocals anywhere you need them to go. So let me get this on a loop just so you can really understand this concept. And let's play with the
high pre-chorus vox, which is right here. ♪ We were fighting ♪ ♪ Flames adding fuel to the fire ♪ ♪ Praying hoping ♪ ♪ God come and save us I'm hopeless ♪ ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ We were fighting ♪ ♪ To the fire ♪ ♪ Praying ♪ ♪ Save us I'm hopeless ♪ - So you're kinda like an air
traffic controller in a way. And I've got my first background
vocal here on the left. And then the other one here on the right. And I've got other
inter-plugin communication compatible plugins in the
visual mixer right now but we don't see them
'cause I can turn them on and off via this little eyeball. So they can appear or disappear, just to unclutter the screen and let you focus on what you're doing. So again, I've got my vocals
here on the left and right. And if I want to audition different kind of panning structures. All I have to do is
save this as a snapshot. And then for example
I can bring these guys super wide, and maybe save
that one as another snapshot. And maybe we can go really narrow and loud in the third snapshot, like this. Now I can toggle between
these different ones as the song plays. Let's do that. ♪ We were fighting ♪ ♪ Flames adding fuel to the fire ♪ ♪ Praying hoping ♪ ♪ God come and save us I'm hopeless ♪ ♪ What about ♪ - So you can try different scenarios, different structures, it's up to you. I'm gonna go back to my A, panning. And you can also, by the
way, control the width. You can add a bit of a stereo effect here by just dragging these
little bars out, and in. So we've also got more
background vocals here that appear during the chorus. And we can see them too in Visual Mixer. Let me just solo them. So they're called chorus layers, here, here, here and here,
I'll be turning these guys off. 'Cause I don't wanna see them right now. ♪ Tro oh oh oh ♪ ♪ Lo oh oh oh ♪ - So I've just decided that I want one to be a little bit
quieter, on the right side. A little bit hotter on the left side, and then another layer which I felt was a bit more prominent in tone. And we also have one that I'm deciding to put right here in the middle. I just like the way that it sounded, but again, you can audition
different scenarios. It's up to you, and then save them and try them as you go,
instantly, across the mix. Let's hear what that sounds like once we get everything else involved. ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about trust ♪ ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about love ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What if I leave ♪ ♪ What would you do ♪ ♪ What would you think ♪ ♪ What would you say ♪ ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ - So you see as I played that. We introduced a new vocal
that I haven't talked about. And it's this Sci-Fi vox here. So this is just to add
a little bit of flair. A different vibe, a different feeling to keep people's attentions too, as we get to the end of the chorus. And it sounds like this. ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about trust ♪ ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about love ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What if I leave ♪ - But let's add it into the mix now and I think you'll see that it's got a welcome place in this session. ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about trust ♪ ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about love ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What if I leave ♪ ♪ What would you do ♪ ♪ What would you think ♪ ♪ What would you say ♪ - Let's talk about what's on the track. I have an EQ, from Neutron, just doing a super high pass here
to cut out a lot of mud. And the star of the show is VocalSynth. So for those who have not
played with VocalSynth, it's like a crazy set of tools that you can combine, mix and match. We have Vocoder, Compuvox,
Talkbox, Polyvox, these pay homage to
classic vocal processors but we have new ones in
there too, like Biovox which is actually a tool that is inspired and modeled after the human vocal track. So you can bring in
things like breathiness and nasality, and the great
thing about this tool, is that I can mix and match these guys and bring them in to taste. And I can control them from the animation in the center of the screen. There's also a bunch of
stompbox-style effects here and I am using some of them. Distort, transform, delay. And I'm also using a really important and maybe also unsung
feature in this tool, which is the gate. And this is really important for choking or making sure that the noise floor doesn't get through, when the singer's idle
and not making any noise. 'Cause VocalSynth is very sensitive. It will pick up background stuff and process that too, so to make sure you're just processing the vocalist and the noise floor, the background stuff isn't leaking in and getting synthesized. You'll wanna use this gate. Let's go through each
aspect of VocalSynth, and get a loop going so you can hear what it's bringing to the track and what the combination of settings is imparting on the dry vocal. Which sounds like this by the way. We bring the mix slider down. This is nothing, no processing at all. ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about trust ♪ ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about love ♪ - And here is the processed vocal. ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about trust ♪ ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about love ♪ - And we can have the best of both worlds if we want, we can just
bring this halfway down. ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about trust ♪ ♪ What about me ♪ - So first we have the Vocoder, this is kinda Daft Punk style. Let me turn these guys off. Turn off the delay, the transform
and the distort as well. Start with the Vocoder. ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about trust ♪ ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about love ♪ - So then I brought in the Talkbox. ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about trust ♪ - And I found that kinda
softened things up a bit. And then Polyvox. ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about trust ♪ ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about love ♪ - And then I crunched things up a bit with the distort module. ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about trust ♪ ♪ What about me ♪ - And you can mix these
in to taste to parallel, they're all up at a 100%. And then I brought in transform. ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about trust ♪ ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about love ♪ - And then finally delay. ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ - Which just lifts the vocal a little bit. It's mix slider is down at about 20 here. I didn't want it to be too soupy. ♪ What about you ♪ - There's a 100. ♪ What if I leave ♪ ♪ What would you do ♪ ♪ What would you say ♪ - Let's bring it back to 20. ♪ What about me ♪ - And here's the
important thing, the gate. Let me bring the gate all the way down so it's not doing anything. ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about trust ♪ ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about love ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What if I leave ♪ - 'Cause picking up those breaths in between the vocals, I don't want that. 'Cause that stuff just sounds kinda funny. So I'm gonna bring the gate up. ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about trust ♪ ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about love ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What if I leave ♪ ♪ What would you do ♪ - 'Cause that just makes sure we get a nice clean processed vocal, and we're not synthesizing unwanted vocal by products and things like that. I also have on this track
one of my favorite plugins. It's not an iZotope plugin,
it's called PanMan by Soundtoys. It's just gonna pan this
vocal really easily. I could automate this myself,
but it just takes two seconds. So it's moving left and right in our ears, which is kinda fun. ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about trust ♪ ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about love ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What if I leave ♪ - And here's everything in the mix. ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about trust ♪ ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about love ♪ ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What if I leave ♪ ♪ What would you do ♪ ♪ What would you think ♪ ♪ What would you say ♪ (echoing low whine) - I wanna show you something
that's going on across all the vocals. I'm sending all the
vocals, you'll see here, to this thing called vocal bus. From the lead vocals to the layers and background and all that stuff. And this is again to control
for any tonal imbalances. 'Cause what's on that vocal
bus is a tool called Sculptor, and I'm using it here in the
standalone component plugin, but if you have Neutron Standard, you can open it up there as well. And what this is doing, is
this is like a last safety to make sure that we are suppressing any imbalances tonally,
so we have a nice smooth vocal sound across all of the vocals. Sculptor is a multiband compressor that is split into many,
many, many, many bands and it's gently and carefully attenuating, if you want it to, or boosting. But in this case we're
attenuating and controlling for any kind of sourness
or resonant frequencies. And again, just as a last safety, before everything gets mixed in. So everything is running to this guy, you can open the presets here. I just went to vocal control, 'cause that's what I wanted to do. Control the vocals, very simple. And if I click, I'm gonna open this up. And boost this a little bit. ♪ Feeling reunited ♪ - You can see it's identifying areas that it wants to suppress. And suppresses them when they come up. We can increase that effect. ♪ We were fighting ♪ ♪ Flames adding fuel to the fire ♪ ♪ Praying hoping ♪ ♪ God come and save us I'm hopeless ♪ ♪ What about me ♪ - And we can also mix this in to taste. Again in a parallel way. ♪ Feeling Reunited ♪ ♪ Options to be chosen ♪ ♪ Devotion can be broken ♪ ♪ We were ♪ - Sculptor is just my last chance to control for any vocal
anomalies, tonally, before we make it to our stereo bus. (echoing low whine) So now what I wanna do is
go through some special processing, some effects things that I do, that you might wanna do to the vocals to keep the listener engaged
and delighted and surprised. Now the first thing might
not be so surprising if you've heard pop
over the last 30 years. But people like it. It's reverse reverb. And it introduces Lilah's
track at the beginning here. Have a listen. ♪ We were undivided ♪ - So this is a very easy effect to create, but I'm doing some things to it that take it to another level, so it's not just reverse reverb. If we look at the track here and solo it. You'll hear a couple things. You'll hear PanMan, which is just shifting the sound across the
channels, left and right. We also have this going to a reverb and a tape delay as
well, after it's ended. Just to keep it ping ponging in our ears, as Lilah opens up her verse. So take a listen. (reverberating hum) So the delay with the PanMan, gives us that ping pong effect. So if you want to know
how to make an effect such as this, I've created
another lane down here. And what I'm going to do is just steal the first chunk of the
word here from Lilah. (repeating vocal) And copy it down here. And I'm gonna click to
extend the length here. And you'll see why I'm
doing this in a moment. I'm gonna go now to AudioSuite. I'm gonna find a reverb that I like. And there happens to be one in the Exponetial Audio folder, R4. Very lush musical reverb. Large hall works for me. And I'm gonna go and
increase the reverb time. And now press Preview. ♪ We ♪ - And that's what I want, I
wanna nice long decay time. It's still going, if you turn it up. So, I'm going to render that. And now what I'll do with
my selection still active, is go to Avid, and then go to reverse, and you can do this in your DAW. And then hit render. And now we flipped it, nice long tail. Gonna just shorten it here. And you wanna line this up
with your ears and your eyes. Let's have a listen. ♪ We were undivided ♪ - Not bad. I can go here and turn up the clip gain, to make this effect a bit more audible. ♪ We were undivided ♪ - If you want you can tinker with this to make sure it lines up
perfectly or imperfectly, whatever sounds good. So that's how you create
the reverse reverb sound. By getting a long tail, flipping it and then lining it up so that it matches the beginning of the first word. So I'm gonna delete this
and then I'm gonna show you how I got some of the effects
on the reverse reverb. So you'll notice that after
she finishes her reverse sweep, it delays for a little bit after that. (reverberating hum) So what I'm doing is
I'm automating a send. And we'll go down here, level. And you can see this little bump here. That's because I'm automating this send on the tape delay. (reverberating hum) And the tape delay is Nectar 3's delay, which sounds wonderful. And we've got some eighth notes here, were using a tape
algorithm, we're modulating a little LFO action there, and
it just sounds really good. And it mixes up at about 69. And we're also doing a bit of a bandpass to make sure we're not too dark or bright. We can just tailor the delay sound, to what we like, if I open this up you can see it has a very
different kind of quality. (reverberating hum) To me that's a bit too
bright, so let's just narrow the bands, so we don't have
a splashy delay effect. (reverberating hum) That's better. And of course, PanMan is
just taking us left to right to keep it interesting in the ears. Let's do it one more time in the mix. ♪ We were undivided ♪ ♪ Feeling ♪ - The last thing I'll show
you here is that I'm doing a similar technique as
we leave this chorus and go into the second verse. Have a listen for that
delay at the end of "say". ♪ What about you ♪ ♪ What about me ♪ ♪ What if I leave ♪ ♪ What would you do ♪ ♪ What would you think ♪ ♪ What would you say ♪ ♪ Waking in the morning ♪ ♪ I'm thinking 'bout you ♪ - So again, very simple. I'm gonna go to my chorus track here, it's also being sent to the tape delay. The same one that I used
on the reverse reverb at the beginning of the song. And I'm automating it's send as well. As you can see, right there. So this just comes up right at the end, just to spike that last line so that it ping pongs too. ♪ What would you think ♪ ♪ What would you say ♪ - I decided not to pan it, 'cause I just felt like we just didn't really need it at that moment. Whereas at the beginning
there's less going on and so we can actually perceive
the panning a bit more. Here it's a little crowded and I just felt like it
wasn't totally needed. Let's have a listen to that
effect once more in the mix. ♪ What would you do ♪ ♪ What would you think ♪ ♪ What would you say ♪ ♪ Waking in the morning ♪ ♪ I'm thinking 'bout you ♪ ♪ Losing more sleep ♪ ♪ As I lose it for you ♪ ♪ Think about ♪ - So in your own mixing,
especially with vocals, find ways to make them interesting. Find ways to elevate them. I know the flanging and stuff
it might not be everyone's cuppa tea, but when you
introduce that stuff in the background very
subtly, it just give movement and lift and I think
some interesting moments for the listener as
they go through a song. It's important to always
keep the listener in mind. And why not engage them
with fun processing, once you've again, controlled for level and tonal and balances. Just have fun and just bring some stuff in that keeps the track interesting. That concludes this mixing tutorial. Thank you so much for watching. For more videos like this,
hit the little bell icon and subscribe to our channel, to be notified when we upload new stuff, and we always do. Head to izotope.com to download
a free trial of anything. literally anything that
you saw in this video, you can replicate with our tools at home, in a session that really matters to you. On our website we also
have ear training tools like Pro Audio Essentials. Blogs, tutorials or the videos too, so make sure to go there. Thank you so much for watching. Take care. ♪ What would you say ♪ (gentle rock music)
