Waves Vocal Plugin Chain That Always Works...

vocals can be so hard to mix sometimes and depending on the singer and how the vocals are recorded what they use for microphones whether it's a condenser mic or a dynamic microphone like i'm using you get so many different palettes of sound so just having a single plug-in chain doesn't ever seem to work until now i want to share with you a strategy that i've developed over the last 15 years or so for mixing vocals that seems to work for whatever vocal i throw at it doesn't matter what genre it is as long as you're going for a modern sounding vocal now don't get me wrong you're gonna have to tweak it a little bit depending on the song or the project you're working on but for 99 of the time this waves vocal plug-in chain just does the trick now if you don't have any of these plug-ins or you just can't afford them right now that's totally fine you can definitely use any stock plug-in that does the same thing it might just take a little bit more work and if you're looking for some really good free mixi mastering plugins i've put together a comprehensive guide for you already there's a link to that in the description this guide has everything from compressors limiters clippers distortion special effects there's reverbs these are plugins that i literally use for mixing mastering music every single day and some of them even sound better in my opinion than some of my paid plugins so if that sounds interesting to you go and check out that guide again there's a free download in the description if you don't know me yet my name is bobby bailo i'm the mixing and mastering engineer at raytown productions and i help you make better sounding music without needing to buy expensive gear or equipment if you're new here thank you so much for joining me today be sure to hit that subscribe button because i drop new videos every single week and you do not want to miss a single one because they're going to help you level up the quality of your music so the session today is by a band called street urchins and they're out of california so if you like what you hear definitely go in support them they are an awesome bunch of dudes i have links to their social media accounts and all that stuff in the description as well so when you're dealing with vocals in most sessions you're going to basically have two different tones you're going to have a very bright airy modern sounding vocal which is usually recorded with a large diaphragm condenser microphone or you're going to have something that's a little bit warmer and not so airy just like this uh dynamic mic that i'm using okay so in order for us to have a plug-in chain that works for any of these things we need to find a way to sculpt the overall balance in a way that adjusts to both a condenser style mic and the dynamic mic so the first thing we're going to do is put on a multi-band compressor just to reshape these the tonality and the balance of the vocal regardless if it's recorded with a condenser or a dynamic mic so let's just hear what the vocals sound like [Music] [Music] so you can hear the vocal isn't super bright right it sounds kind of warm so this is probably actually recorded with a dynamic microphone now the way i like to reshape vocals is by using wave c6 and i absolutely love this plugin this is my default load state of this plug-in okay so anytime i load up a track to work on this is what comes up first and you probably noticed i didn't use an eq before that's because we can handle all the plosives by uh adjusting to gain this low band let me just give you a quick run through of what i have set up here so two of these bands are basically parametric bands okay you move this anywhere you want so those i have set at 150 hertz and 2 and 2 500 hertz and the reason is is 150 is where vocals will sometimes get kind of boomy sounding or muddy and two and a half k is where they can get really annoying and kind of cut through and be harsh and honky sounding so i typically just set it up this way and then i'll fine-tune it depending on the vocalist style everything under about 105 hertz i'm basically cutting completely away i'm pulling this down 18 db and then we're also gonna do some multi-band compression uh with a range of minus six db so it'll pull off another 6 db if the vocals get too bassy for some reason so then i have a band from 105 hertz to 3.5 k this basically is going to be the vocal that is reproduced on most low-fi speaker systems like let's say your car or a cell phone or something so this band is going to do a lot of the heavy lifting for us what i like to do here is lock in a very powerful full mid-range vocal sound by boosting 3 db of the vocal tone and at the same time we're going to compress it back down actually and we're going to compress it even lower than its normal level okay so what this is doing is we're raising those frequencies into the compressor and the compressor is actively always pushing that down so we have a very flat consistent mid-range of our vocal the entire performance okay so this is helping to reshape the vocal tone regardless of its condenser or dynamic mic okay and we're going to follow that same strategy in the higher frequencies too most modern vocal sounds are very bright and airy okay so what i like to do is we'll boost this high band from 3.5 k to 9 and a half k pretty aggressively like maybe 8 db um so it's noticeably bright okay and we're going to do the same strategy where we have up to maybe 12 or sometimes i'll even pull us down to minus 16 db of potential gain reduction okay so again we're boosting those high frequencies to make on average the tone to be on the bright side and then any time things get too bright the compressor's going to grab all those frequencies out exactly the same strategy for the highest airy band okay so everything above 9.5 k i'm gonna boost probably at least 8 db if not more sometimes i've gone up to 12 or 16 db if i if i'm missing that air off the vocal again hold this range knob down so we're also attenuating it so it doesn't run away on us okay so let me show you how i dial this in when we're playing the vocal like i've been stuck in this rut for so long i mean if i pass all the bands i'll put them in one at a time and i'm afraid to make a change from this laptop so this one again that cleans up the plosives and any of the really rumbly base that we don't really want in our vocal i feel alone this band is there just to thicken it and keep it consistent i've been stuck in this rod for so long and i'm afraid to make a change perfect from this this is gonna be our presence or like the articulation of the vocal and i'm afraid to make a change from this life that i'm used to but i know without a goal so you can see it's it's really bright but it never gets too bright right let's add this air band i'm just wasting time wasting away another day like i've been stuck in this rut for so long and i'm afraid to make a change from this life that i'm used to now if you're too aggressive with this you can actually cause the vocalist to sound like they have a lisp so be very careful with how much you're actually attenuating your thresholds biting into the track too much or you have too much gain reduction so just lower your range another thing you can do is change the attack and release parameters i have very very fast releases on all my high bands because i want the airiness to stay there if you have a really long release you're going to get this weird like pumping motion in the high frequencies and it's gonna be really noticeable and it's gonna be distracting if you wanna add a little bit more aggression or presence to the vocal you can just have a slower attack as well that'll let any of the little sharp transients jump through before it attenuates uh the really high frequencies so let me dial that in like i've been stuck in this rod for so too short let's open it up and i'm afraid to make a change from this life that i'm used to but i know without a goal i'm jo i feel so alone like i've been stuck in this rut for so long and i'm afraid to make a change all right so i think i think we're getting a good spot here from this life that i'm used to well let's activate this 2.5 k band just to help with a little bit of the honkiness of that feel so alone and i'm afraid to make a change so i'm just you can use the solo band to find the specific frequency from this life that i'm used to but i know without a goal ah there it is it's so much smoother now let me show you without it stuck in this rod for so long and i'm afraid to make a change from this life that i'm used to cool perfect um and at this point i think we're pretty good in terms of using the wave c6 to shape the vocal let's now go to the next step so now we want to do is we want to squeeze the performance together so we have a consistent level and typically that's done using just a regular compressor in this case i tend to use waves cla 76 so this is just a 1176 compressor i think the bluey mode sounds a little bit cooler it just has a little bit more vibe to it than the black i always go with this one now there's basically two main parameters you want to worry about the attack and release i find that for vocals you usually want them very close to the front of the mix so have a really fast release okay and on this type of compressor a fast release is a high number it's kind of backwards from how most compressors are designed but just crank it up here if the vocalist feels like they're too far in front you can just slow the release down and that'll give this sense that the vocalist is going farther back in the mix and then you can think of this attack knob as like an aggression knob okay if you have it really fast it's just going to be flat across it's really not going to have a lot of movement it's going to just kind of be the same whole way which is kind of boring in my opinion so i like to have the attack between like five and maybe two somewhere in here that lets a little bit of the performance go through so it feels a little bit more lively let's dial in some compression here and just get a nice solid consistent performance just alone i like i've been stuck in this rod for so long and i'm afraid to make a change from this life that i'm used to but i know without a goal i'm just wasting time and i would say be careful looking at the meter trust your ears you'll know if you're compressing it too much i know i know a lot of times people see and they're like wow it goes up to minus 10 db don't let that fool you right that might just be a loud moment in the song so if as long as it sounds okay just go with it you're so alone i like i've been stuck in this rod for so long cool this is a good starting point i'm liking that i will say after compressing the vocal i think it is a little on the bright side so let's come back here let's bring these these down a little bit and let's boost up that that low mid band that helps to thicken the vocal right here this one and i'm afraid to make a change from this life that i'm used to well there we go all right i think we're good to go now the next thing i do is i actually put another compressor after this but this is a different style so we used the 76 compressor now i'm going to use cla2a so this is an optical style compressor basically it just is a lot slower when it reacts to a signal so this is going to help create a more dynamic performance that just makes the vocal more interesting it also helps to kind of glue it together in my opinion so let's let's dial this one in a lock i've been stuck in this rod for so long and i'm afraid to make a change from this life that i'm used to but i know so it's getting a little bit too compressed so let me uh back this off a little bit alone like i've been stuck in this rod for so long and i'm afraid to make a change from this life that i'm used to but i know without a goal that feels right to me i usually don't do too much compression with with this one this one's just there like i said it's like an insurance policy okay um at this point now i have an eq here just in case there's anything that might be harsh that's making its way through so we can do a little bit of cutting but for right now i think we're okay i don't think we really need to use this at all now at this point i always like to put a de-esser here just in case something sneaks through one of the things that drives me crazy listening to music is if you have a really sibilant vocal and all you need to fix that is a de-esser and waves makes a great one and it's just called de-esser it's you can't get more simple than that right all right so let's just uh dial this in and make sure that it's catching any of the annoying frequencies like i've been stuck in this rod for so long and if you really want to dial in uh the right frequency for this plug-in you can go to the side chain monitor button here and now you're only going to hear the frequencies that it's listening to to attenuate right so actually down here is kind of where those frequencies sound the most harsh cool so let's let's go back to this audio monitor button and now we'll just pull this fader down so it makes the vocal a little bit easier to this rod for hear long and i'm afraid to make a change from this life that i'm used to but i know if this attenuate light is flashing all the time you probably have your threshold set too low okay this should only be jumping in when the vocals get too bright but i know without a goal i'm just wasting time wasting away another day i feel so alone like i've been stuck in this rod for so long i actually like it better with this opened up this filter open now we have one more thing and this might be something you're like whoa whoa what are you doing but hear me out okay i always put a limiter at the very end yeah i know people like why a limiter you already put three compressors on the vocals why do you need a limiter aren't limiters for mastering well maybe but they also sound good on vocals okay in the big picture of mixing a song we have to have control over each of the different elements otherwise you can spend all day volume writing everything to make all the pieces fit together so if you can really control the performance of the vocal then you don't have to do like any automation the song basically just works okay so i always tend to put a limiter after at the end of my vocal chain just to make sure make absolutely sure that nothing is going to sneak by and make a tiny moment way too loud in the track i'm literally just using waze l1 it's like the oldest plug-in they've ever had probably and i'm just gonna bring it down and just basically brick wall it at the point where it just barely is touching it okay so let's do that and i'm afraid to make a change from this life that i'm used to but i know without a goal so you can see the breaths are actually super loud and i'm afraid to make a change let's see how this barely is blinking it's only on very certain moments from this life that i'm used to but i know without so there you have it okay let's hear what it sounds like before and then after the vocal chain rod for so long and i'm afraid to make a change from this life that i'm used to but i know without a goal i'm just wasting time wasting away another day i feel so alone like i've been stuck in this rut for so long and i'm afraid to make a change from this life that i'm used to but i know without a goal i think you can hear it instantly turned a boring dull vocal that was recorded probably with a dynamic mic into something that sounds modern and bright and airy that we're used to hearing so the only thing left to do at this point is basically just to add your effects okay so your reverbs delays all that stuff i've already taken up a ton of your time so i'm gonna save that for another video but just to give you a little uh a taste well i'll give you a little tiny taste here [Music] there you have it that plug-in chain works every single time i use it it's amazing i can just literally load up that and no matter what performer what singer what microphone what preamp they used this this chain always works so which one of these vocal mixing tricks are you going to use for your mixing workflow let me know in the comments i love seeing people leave comments about their experiences with plugins or different strategies for doing things because anybody that comes across it is going to learn from that i want to remind you to go and grab your free downloadable copy of my favorite free mixing and mashing plugins and again these are plugins that i use almost every single day they sound amazing and they're totally free what more could you ask for if you feel like supporting me or this channel all you have to do is share my video with some of your friends online or on facebook or reddit or some other community where people are trying to learn to mix music i'm sure this will help somebody somewhere so i'd really appreciate that and with that i want to thank you so much for your time and attention today and hope to see you in another video you

Channel: Raytown Productions

Views: 111,503

Keywords: vocal chain, waves plugins, home studio, mixing vocals, vocal mixing, waves vocal plugins, vocal plugins, sit vocals in a mix, how to use compression, mixing rap vocals, plugin chains, plugin ordering, mixing hip hop vocals, mixing pop vocals, vocal mixing techniques, waves c6 multiband compressor, waves deesser, cla 76 compressor vocals, cla la2a, waves cla-2a, Waves L1, vocal chain waves plugins, how to mix vocals, best vocal, best vocal plugins, vocal plugin chain

Id: ZSYJlpCaM7M

Length: 20min 39sec (1239 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 08 2021