PRO ENGINEER REVEALS: Multiband Vocal Mixing

have you ever wondered how mixing Engineers for artists like Ariana Grande Ed Sheeran or Billy eilish get back in vocals on tracks to sit so smoothly in the mix perfectly positioned to blend as one whilst not clashing with the lead vocal is there a perfect equation what special settings are they hiding well here's how you do it so we have a lead vocal and we have a couple of backing vocals and we want them to blend perfectly so that we hear the lead vocal out front and then the backing vocals are just doing their job they're very smooth but they're out of the way of the lead vocal but we still want them to be present we want them to be holding the vocal up so how does he do that well let's listen to what we've got to start with and then I'll show you exactly what to do to get it to work beautifully together so when you on your own stuff off the water we built this up with bricks and mortar so it's kind of all right but it just sounds a little bit amateur doesn't it it doesn't sound like they should be together the backing vocals are kind of on their own they're kind of fighting against the lead vocal my focus point in my ears doesn't know to listen to the backing vocal and just have those supporting it to make it sound bigger it sounds like oh where am I listening what am I doing so first of all I've kept the lead vocal on its own but the backing vocals I've put into a bus or a summing stack if you're in logic so the reason we put it in a bus or something stack is so that we can apply the same processing on just one channel rather than across every single backing vocal on this summing stack you'll see I have two plugins one is the pro Q3 and one is the pro MB now the pro Q3 you did hear on the before that is basically just doing a very low cut on the backing vocals just because there's some kind of darkest stuff that we want to get rid of so that's just a straightforward about 200 Hertz low cut and there is a little bit of dynamic EQ going on in the similar area now next is the gold I put the pro MB on now what we're going to do is scoop out the mids but we don't want to scoot them out so that they sound really thin and there's nothing left of them but we just want to keep them out of the way of the vocal so the way to do this and this settings work on every single type of backing vocal obviously you might have to adjust slightly but you can download this and all the session files and all the presets from the link below in the description sorry to break your concentration but I've got a very important message for you if you've been enjoying my videos on mixing and mastering recently then you'll be really chuffed to know that I've got a massive sale on over the Easter holidays there's up to 80 off some of my courses on mixing and mastering not only do I have mixing and mastering courses on this sale I also have a way of mastering in Ozone 10. also I have courses on Ableton and logic so to head over to streaky.com where you can grab these mental discounts so that you can learn exactly how to mix like a pro so what are we doing with the pro MB first of all we're setting up three sections the first crossover point is at 180 the next crossover point is around 9 30 and the next crossover point is around 4.85 K the range setting on Band 1 is -5 DB Band 2 range is minus about 15 DB Band 3 is around minus three and a half DB the ratio for all of these is a four to one ratio so the attacker release times on all of these settings are pretty similar it's a medium range attack and a fairly fast release but not too quick we still want a little bit of sustain going on now that's the settings let me show you how this sounds we build this up with bricks and mortar so when you're on your own self of the water we build this up with bricks and mortar so you can hear what this has done it's created a really nice pocket in the mid-range in the backing vocals to allow the main vocal just to sit on top of it but why have we scooped this particular frequency this is where our ears pick up most of the sound around 1K and above so we are really susceptible to what's happening in this area so when you've got too much happening in this area it sounds congested and your ear can't focus on one thing this way by scooping out the backing vocals a little bit and creating that pocket it means they're both sitting in exactly the right spot so that we can pick it up perfectly on our ears because the lead vocal is carrying more of the frequencies than the backing vocal so I'm not finished there what I want to do here to make it even smoother and work better with the lead vocal is do a trick that I showed you in last week's video where we're going to grab a Reverb the valve settings aren't too important at this point and we're going to put a compressor after it so for a review of Where we've come from in this short amount of time let's listen to the before and after so when you're on your own we built this up with bricks and mortar don't forget all the session files and settings and presets are available free of charge from the link below don't forget to subscribe and drop me a like if you want me to do more stuff like this watch the next video that's coming up if you want to know how Dua Lipa and Miley Cyrus get their vocals to sound so perfect in every track

Channel: Streaky

Views: 159,408

Keywords: mixing vocals, how to mix vocals, mixing backing vocals, how to mix, how to mix backing vocals, mixing background vocals, vocal mixing, how to mix background vocals, home studio, home recording, vocal eq, audio engineering, how to eq vocals, mixing vocals in logic pro x, audio mixing, mixing tutorial, vocal mixing tutorial, fabfilter pro mb

Id: DSc9i4DpjQE

Length: 5min 31sec (331 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 11 2023