Your Vocal Automation is NOT SEXY enough!

if your vocal automation doesn't look like this your vocals I'm not sexy enough stay tuned after hours got what you need welcome to after hours my name's Gregory Scott tonight we're going to talk about automation and specifically I want to get into using automation and ways to enhance your arrangement and your dynamics meaning when you come into one section things change and elements come and elements go and balances shift and frequency shift and effects and space and depth and automation is one of the most powerful tools that we have as mixers to make all of this happen so today I'm gonna be focusing specifically on transitions these are the moments that go from verse 2 pre-chorus and pre-chorus a chorus and intro to verse and hold these moments that you have that are opportunities to engage the listener and prevent their attention from wandering which is the big trick in mixing you want to always be moving the spotlight around to keep the listeners ear focused where you think it needs to be focused for maximum emotional impact so let's start off with number 1 which is pushing and pulling a vocal or a top-line element whether it's a lead synth or whatever is carrying the moment of the section that you're coming into so if you think about when you're coming out of a pre-chorus and into the chorus generally speaking what's happening there is you've got a lot of energy building up you've got the music is kind of coming to this little climax or maybe it's the second or the third course you've really got a big climax happening and what you want is for the vocal or the top line or whatever's the main instrument of choice to stay in focus even with all this explosion of energy around it now there'll be times when that's not true when you want the focus to go somewhere else and that's all good and you'll use your judgment on that but by and large if you've got a vocal happening you want people to be able to stay keyed into that because the brain is we are trained evolutionarily hundreds thousands of years at work here to key into the human voice and if it becomes indistinct if we lose a word and we've been tracking everything up to that point and then suddenly we can't hear it that's gonna distract us that's gonna pull the listener out of the moment of the song so when you hit the beginning the first occult the downbeat of the first bar of a new section whether it's a chorus or verse or whatever it is sometimes it's just a crash cymbal that gets in the way of the vocals sometimes it's a couple of guitar chords and a synth stab but whatever's going on use your automation to shove that vocal up front and as with all things in mixing never be afraid to be aggressive so for me when I got a vocal coming in and I'm really because I'm an aggressive mixer so I will have levels pushing I'll have the master fader being pushed by half or a full DB when going into a chorus I'll have two or four word new elements coming in sometimes they're hard pants sometimes are up the middle there would be an effect that hits there'll be a synth from the previous section that's ringing out and all this sound piles up and for a moment you've got some incredible density there and through it all there's this little tiny voice that's got a poke through and I will I'm not above shoving that fader up three five sometimes even 7 DB doesn't matter just do whatever it takes to keep that thing up there you don't want it to blow people's brains out but you want them to be able to stay focused on that vocal and keep it audible but have it remain inside and connected to the music and a lot of times what that looks like is it's just the first word or two that really needs to be pushed up and then you can ramp it back down maybe slowly maybe quickly but use your judgement in your ears but what you'll find is that as long as you just tweak the the listeners ear with that vocal loud and proud for just the first syllable or the first word or the first three words in the phrase you can then kind of really push the vocal pretty far back into the music and they'll still be able to track what's going on because it's just that initial bit of sound that they need to stay focused in on it so use this trick leverage this trick to your advantage so that you can mix the music as aggressively as it needs to and not feel like you need to hold back on things or car space or pull things out of the way in order to keep the vocal intelligible just shove the vocal to the front of the mix and then be clever about how quickly you pull it back and how much you pull it back and sometimes you may have to trail it off across the full bar or two bars it depends on everything else that's happening around it but use your judgement there but again as with all things never be afraid [Music] so these are the powerful things that automation can do for you in your mixes I encourage you to explore all of this and more and if you have any ideas that I didn't hit in this please hit us up in the comments below leave your feedback give us some likes do what you do thanks for tuning in I'm Gregory Scott this has been cushion hours until next time [Music] [Music]

Channel: The House of Kush

Views: 56,316

Keywords: ubk, Analog, Analog Gear, DAW, logic, pro tools, reaper, ableton, producing, record producing, record production, how to mix, how to mix music, music production, Plugins, Audio Editing, Sound Design, vocal recording, how to make a good vocal track, mixing vocals, producing vocals

Id: 72aMp89c9AU

Length: 5min 32sec (332 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 15 2020