Mixing R&B Vocals with Logic Pro Stock Plugins

[Music] hey what's going on out there I'm Sean Devine today I'm back with a new tutorial this one's by request I had a lot of people asking if I would do an R&B bass tutorial using only stock plugins after watching my hip-hop vocal tutorial using only Logic Pro X plug-in so I want to do the same thing here just with a different approach again it's an R&B soulful kind of sound here the track is by Moses stone it's called not the one let me go ahead and play it back for you and this is just dry everything zeroed out no effects nothing going on right now [Music] [Applause] [Music] not everybody if you love my baby with me work let's go you gotta go come now all right so that gives you a good idea of what we're dealing with with the vocals right now you can see that we just have one main vocal and then we have a lot of background vocals so this is pretty typical of this particular genre with R&B I get a lot of background layers from a lot of different artists for this kind of thing so processing these is a little bit different mixing these is a little bit different than you would approach say a hip-hop track obviously so I'm going to show you how I'm going to do that but first I'm going to mute all of that because I don't even want to be thinking about the backgrounds right now at this stage we really just need to be focused on this main layer main vocal layer getting it sitting right in the mix with the instrumentation so let's go ahead and work on that so the first thing we need to do is just go ahead and do a little bit of pitch correction Moses is a great singer but there's just a couple of spots that I want to touch up a little bit so we're going to pull out the stock pitch correction from logic we're not needed auto-tune or anything like that since this is an all stock plugin video and we need to dial in the key of the song and this is in a minor if I'm not mistaken so I'm going to go to the natural minor scale and we'll hit eighth and then I'm going to solo this mock a and just to get a feel for the pitch creation in terms of where you're at in the scale I like to go ahead and turn the response time to as fast as it'll go just so that we can hear what's happening my crazy for making you my baby when everyone round me to me that you know good for me gonna feel so hot so we can hear just by what the auto-tune is doing that it's keeping it in the right scale so we're in a minor that's good and now I just want to while it's playing adjust the the retune speed so that we get something more natural because again we're not going for the t-pain kind of robotic effect especially with someone who has you know a good range the good vocal already like Moses I just wanted to be kind of keeping things in check with the pitch when everyone round me to me that you know good for me gonna feel so hot and you got me under your spell how did I get him I swear came out of nowhere hey how can I let somebody else so that feels about right to me I think that's just going to give us just enough correction near but I'm going to go ahead and I'm gonna send this main vocal to a bus now I get a lot of questions about why I use buses and why I don't just put you know other effects other than pitch creation directly on the the channel has inserts and one of the biggest reasons is for resourcefulness to be able to reuse chains for various tracks that you'll see in a little bit you know we may use the the same ox for some of the backgrounds we may process them on the same ox we may not we may want to send the intro vocal let's say there was a little intro kind of ad-lib thing maybe we wanted to run that to the main ox of the vocals so it just gives you some freedom in terms of what you want to send there rather than just using all those plugins and eating up a lot of your resources by just you know stacking everything individually on each track is just not a very resourceful an efficient way of doing things so let's just go ahead and we'll just say Ms main and the first thing we need to do is I want to do a little bit of gating so we're going to go to our handy noise gate or logic and we're just going to adjust this to get rid of some of the headphone bleed and other noise going on there am I crazy for making you my baby when everyone around me to me that you know there's a little bit of something here turn down your touch wherever you went when everyone round me to me that you know gives me gonna feel so hot and you got me under your spell funny like it you so you can hear right there as I turn it down a little too much it kind of started cutting off some stuff so you want to be careful I do not get you a sweater like it is I do not get you so for the example let's just leave that right there a lot of times you know if something like that is happening I'll just turn the threshold down and I'll go in and manually select you know whatever's there and maybe silence it just so I'm not making the noise gate try and pick up on all that or maybe miss some things but just something to be aware of let's just leave that and now let's go ahead and do a little bit of pre EQ am I crazy for making you my baby when everyone round me to me that you know good for me there's not much going on in the low end that's good but let's just go ahead and safely roll off let's say everything below 120 there my baby there is a little bit of a room bump now this happens a lot in untreated rooms and even treated rooms you can just have some frequency collection there and it usually is in this like 300 to 800 range I usually will cut some of that am I crazy for making you my baby when everyone around me to me that you nope yeah the bump is really noticeable to me now is more up in this 500 to 700 range around me to me that you know gives me well to another little bump over here at the 200 in my crazy for making you my baby when everyone round me to me that you know good for me gonna fizzle so as you can hear there there's a really similar spot and there's a lot of sub 1 through out the vocal and I'm going to go ahead and tell you right now that the stock the SR in logic is not very good with de-essing vocals I'm hoping they're going to come out with more of a vocal specific D s or something easier to use that gives you a better result in this one the good news is that I do have a workaround using some stock logic plugins to get you a warmer tone out of a similar vocal and that's using the compressor in logic so first before we get to that we're going to go ahead and just compress the vocal the way we normally would now if you're familiar with logic you obviously have these different kind of flavors or tones of compressors that are modeled after you know vintage gear classic studio types of compressors I really prefer the studio FET for this type of vocals so that's what we're going to use here and let's just go ahead and dial in a good compress compression setting you will notice that when we compress it it's going to bring up that sibilance we're going to be dealing with that next so just hang with me people found me tell me that you don't just me [Music] got me and we're going to turn make up gain off making my baby and people found me fill me that you noticed me and for an R&B vocal I typically like to go with a little bit slower attack time versus hip-hop where we're trying to really just grab the transient quickly like to have a little bit of room to let the dynamics out in the R&B vocal sound me tell me that you don't get me a little bit slower release time as well that sounds about right again I I know we've got this sibilance going on but in terms of just being in the pocket feeling good level wise with the beat I think we're in a good spot so now let me show you this de-esser trick that I have for you using sidechain in the logic compressor so before we do that now this might seem a little counterproductive but we're going to EQ we're going to heavily boost so this is not different from some of the other tutorials I've showed you where we're going to heavily boost some of these high frequencies and then send it into a de-esser but in this case it's going to be a compressor but anyway let's go ahead and let's boost some of this high stuff up here it's going to be really harsh sounding for the time being it came out of nowhere [Music] and I hate we're going to leave that for now now I'm going to open up another compressor and we're going to go back to studio fat here and we're going to go to sidechain and what I want to do is I want to find a point that is particularly sibilant and I've already got one highlighted here so it's just this consonant in this part I feel so hot I'm just going to solo it and this is not going to be the most pleasant thing to listen to but you want to just kind of loop it and we're going to go over here to the filter section and I'm going to click listen you're gonna move this knob to where it's the harshest let's go to high-pass scuse me so about right there sorry hope I didn't kill your ears here but cuz this is how you've got to do it so anyways let's adjust the Q a little bit I'm going to put that about right middle I'll show you why in a minute but we don't want to have the compressor grabbing too much of our sound here so now we're just going to turn the filter on pila fell so hot Gila fell so hop we need to turn our ratio up pretty high attack time needs to be as quick as it can so we can grab that s real quick and then our release time is going to be pretty fast as well because we don't want to grab a lot of the rest of the word we're just trying to grab this sibilant continent gonna feel so hot gonna feel so hot gonna feel so hot so hard on me just so oh yeah gonna feel so hot you can see right there it's grabbing that just the SL what do we want gonna feel so hot gonna feel so hot gonna feel so hot gonna feel so hot gonna feel so hot and you got me and gonna feel so hot gonna feel so hot so without it gonna feel so hot I was gonna feel so hot okay so now let's play back with the beat yummy under yes [Music] we came out of nowhere say how can I [Music] I love my baby when another work trying to let go but hey you girl I gotta go I'm not I gotta know that sounded much better so now that we've got a pretty good tone dialed in just for the overall vocal we may use that as just a starting point for our background vocals and what I've done with the backgrounds is I've just kind of group them according to you know where they are in terms of the verse so that we can deal with those in that kind of way now you'll notice that they're already slightly panned some of them this is how they were sent to me we're going to enhance that a little bit but just knowing that they were recorded and tracked in pairs one to the left one to the right which is this is a popular way to track dubs and background vocals for really any genre but especially in R&B when you want the background vocals to really pop you do a left and a right side take so let me just let you hear let's just mute the rest of these and we'll deal with the first four so the first thing I'm going to do is I'm just going to copy the pitch correction that we did on the first track over to these [Music] and I'm going to pan these accordingly so remember left and right we're just going to balance them so if this one's at minus 40 we want the other one to be at minus 40 usually we just want everything to be I'm kind of playing off of each other a little bit so it will go all the way wide with these and a little bit closer in with these let's just see how that sounds [Music] so for pitch correction I'm going to tighten these a little bit it's going to sound a little bit more kind of auto-tune sort of sound but for background vocals I find it just works to tuck them in behind the main vocal [Music] got me under yes so let's send these to their own bus so go to bus 2 and then we'll call these BG 1 and I'm going to copy our setting over here just so we have something to base it on and we'll mix with this fader for now me got me under yes when it came out of nowhere [Music] babe I'm just going for a little bit more of a compressed sound with these got me under way came out of nowhere [Music] a mom let's move to the next backgrounds here it's just so long to see what we're dealing with mama that a very very nice harmony there so we'll put those on their own bus and process those OPG too and then again we'll paste this here we're going to do some different processing here in a second on our backgrounds but we're just getting levels right so again we're going to do some panning let's just start with school this one and again I'm going to drag our pitch crashing over let's just go ahead and put this on all of our backgrounds here okay and we'll start painting a little bit let's just hear what we got so the high ones let's go real wide with these and then let's see what these are mama bag so those are mids so we'll keep those a little bit closer in and I think these would be mama mama it's a nice harmony so we'll keep those a little bit closer in as well and again I'm just kind of going off a feel you can really do whatever feels good to you in terms of the panning I just like them to be wider background vocals it makes them easier to stand out and then more just levels [Music] a little bit more my baby when enabler sounds pretty good now let's do the the last four and then we'll come back and start really adjusting and fine-tuning those backgrounds let's just solo these you're what we got when I can't get you off my mama very very nice again but let's go ahead and we've got these two high ones so I'm gonna wipe an those and then these did you so he's tracked them there's some high stuff here and then these are kind of more mid that's okay we'll just keep these a little bit closer to the center will get maybe like 20 on both sides and I'm gonna turn the highs down [Music] laughs nah man we need to send these two I'll just use let's use the PT to get you up my bags between you and another work trying let's go okay giggle I got go this comes not a gyno so what I want to do now is I want to create a reverb to make these a little bigger we'll just go to background verb and let's go to our logic let's try platinum verb we are going to eat queue the reverb so we'll just get rid of the low stuff here a little bit of a high and then we'll start playing with the other size of it but let's just solo the first for backgrounds first when I can get you my bags up between you and another one to turn and let go of a child enough I was on the first oops yeah I had it omnia main here so we'll send that to the reverb and let's hear what that sounds like when I can get you up my bags up between you and another one to charm and let go but old enough to me maybe yeah I gotta go something I gotta know when I can get you up my my my bags up between you and another one to turn and let go of a job I'll just give us a little bit of sense of space and we should be able to use that for our other backgrounds as well [Music] you animal when I hear it you love my baby when another work time and let's go okay baby girl I can't go come now I got you know got me under way came out of nowhere hey buddy [Music] my mom my babe which mean do an another work trying to let's go hey baby girl I can't go I'm not a guy now all right so next I'm just going to level out some of our armies here there they're pretty loud the backgrounds in general right now I just wanted them to be that way so I could hear everything that's going on but now we want to make them a little more balanced with our main verse later me got me under yes sir when it came out of nowhere when I get you up my baby when another work trying to let's go okay girl I gotta go come now I got no [Music] dummy under that feels better again we could sit here and tweak it and normally I would take a lot more time but for the sake of example let's keep it moving I want to go ahead and just put a real subtle reverb and delay on to the main vocal layer I think it will just help smoothing it out a little bit we've got a nice reverb on our backgrounds matter of fact I'm going to turn that one down just a little bit so we don't get too washy once we add one to our verse later but let's just go ahead and what does copy the other PT or platinum reverb here and use that then we're going to be chilling it once more there we go and let's see what we can pull making me my baby and people around me tell me that you notice me [Music] got me and uh yes [Music] when it came out of nowhere hey baby making you my baby let me will found me tell me that you know got me hot got me under your spell how did I get you i sway again that's nice in the context of the mix gives with a little bit of wit now let's put a delay on here and I'm gonna pull up a delay may be that it'll try let's try a tape delay see what we can get out of this and for the table I just want it to be something real subtle let's see am I crazy for making you my baby we will family's tell me that you don't good for me got me and so we're EQ in the delay a little bit just because we don't want it sticking out too much with the main vocal making my baby happy will family still me that you know just me [Music] I like the quarter note for making you my baby when people found me tell me that you're no good for me Go Go ha got me under weight came out of nowhere ha [Music] between you and your work time and let's go okay baby girl I gotta go this time not again Oh making you my baby look at me will found me tell me that you noticed me alright y'all so that sounds pretty good we used again only stock plugins in Logic Pro just to get a nice good balance we did some pitch correction and then I also showed you a really cool trick of how to use the sidechain on the stock logic compressor for de-essing the DSR in Logic Pro is not the greatest so this is a really good example of how to use that so if you learn anything in this video please like and subscribe if you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them below and we'll talk to you soon [Music] making my baby and people tell me tell me that you know that for me [Music] you got me under yesterday I came out of nowhere [Music]

Channel: Sean Divine

Views: 123,207

Keywords: mixing, rnb, r&b, vocal, vocals, verse, compression, autotune, harmonies, bgv, background, pitch correction, stock, plugins, logic pro x, layering, blending, studio, acapella, beat, soul, deesser

Id: 3Qi6TZVJ_xk

Length: 29min 17sec (1757 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 12 2017