Mixing Demo Vocals - Part 1
Lesson 13 from: Music Production 101: Producing + Songwriting for BeginnersTomas George
Mixing Demo Vocals - Part 1
Lesson 13 from: Music Production 101: Producing + Songwriting for BeginnersTomas George
Lessons
Introduction and What you're going to Learn
00:20 2Writing a Chord Progression
11:37 3Writing a Bass Part
10:19 4Building a Drum Beat
08:57 5Writing a Melody
17:15 6Arrangement - Part 1
14:23 7Arrangement - Part 2
19:06 8Vocal Demo Melodies
04:31Lesson Info
Mixing Demo Vocals - Part 1
Hi. In this video, I'm gonna get to work mixing the demo vocals that Thomas recorded uh for this production, Thomas told me that these vocals won't necessarily be the end product. They're just kind of there as a placeholder before he gets uh a singer in. But it's good to experiment with these and try and mix them just to show you what you'll be up against when you're mixing maybe your own vocals at home. OK. So let's start off with the basics of just trying to find balance. OK. So what I need to do first is I'm not, I don't really have enough headroom on my fader. So what I'm gonna do is load a gain plug in. Uh your door will have one as well. It might be called trim on your software. I'm just gonna use this to turn it up just so that I can use the fad a bit better. Yeah. Hi. OK. So there's some tuning issues in there which I will try and tackle soon. But the first thing that I'm gonna try and tackle actually is the dynamics. So when I say dynamics, I just mean the kind of variance in ...
volume of the sound. Sometimes he kind of pops out the mix and sometimes he kind of disappears in the mix a little bit. So what I wanna do is kind of reduce those variances. Um So that the vocals just kind of sit a bit better uh in this demo mix that we're making that well. Right. So what I've done here is loaded up a compressor using uh logic pro's default compressor here and this compressor is just gonna help us tighten up the dynamics, those variances in the volume of the signal. I've turned off the auto gain here cos I always do that. I don't want it to be doing that for me. And what I'm just gonna do is dial in the threshold and the ratio and keep an eye on this needle to make sure that it's turning down the stuff I want it to turn down by keeping the other stuff at the same volume film. So you can see the needle here kind of reacting to the more to the louder stuff that he's singing and I'm just gonna use the makeup gain just to bring up the loudness again. So let's right. So, ok, and what I'm gonna do is actually turn up the threshold a little bit, but I'm gonna turn up the ratio as well. The ratio is basically the strength of the compression just how much it turns down the loud stuff by now. Let's lo feel fly. Yeah. Said OK. That will do for now in terms of tightening up the dynamics, what I'm also gonna do is use an EQ because I think that the vocals are a little bit too heavy, like they've got a bit too much bases in the recording. So I'm gonna filter some of that away and just get to a place where it isn't muddy against the other instruments. See. So in order to do that, I'm just gonna load an EQ. This is a pretty clean recording. So I don't really need to do any EQ before the compressor. I'm just gonna do some EQ after the compressor here in the chain. So what I'm gonna do is use a low shelf just to reduce the base on the recording. So let's fear. So that's OK. So in terms of the tone, I'm OK with that, I just need to spend some time adjusting the compressor just to tighten those dynamics. Fear. So let's, oh, so I'm flying fear. So let's well feel so right fear. So let's bye fear. So let's, and from here I'm just gonna do some extra processing uh on the vocal just to kind of gel it with the mix a bit better. So let's try a reverb. So the best way to do a reverb in a mix is to use a send. OK? So I'm just gonna click send and I'm just gonna choose a random bus here and on the bus, I'm gonna load a reverb. The one I use is silver verb. It's a really simple reverb and it has all of the standard controls and this is just gonna help the vocal sound more like it's in a space as opposed to just dry, kind of scratchy microphone sound. Um because I've got it on the bus, I'm gonna turn the wet all the way up and leave the dry all the way down. That's basically the difference between no reverb and lots of reverb and I'm just gonna turn up the scent here and then just slowly bring that in and, and try and find the sweet spot. Ok. So fear. So let's fly. You'll notice here that when I'm toggling the bypass on the end, it's not the difference between, oh I can hear reverb and now I can't, it's kind of the like before it's the effect on the mix. Just the effect on the vocal without it, it's kind of a dead recording with it. It's just a bit more natural. Fair. So let's OK from here, I'm just gonna make some adjustments to the reverb itself. It sounds a bit too roomy, a bit too like a big space. So I'm just gonna do some things to reduce the sense of openness and a sense of space in that. So I'm gonna reduce the size, which emulates the size of the room fear. So let's fly, feel my life. So, so let's Bye fly. Let's I that fair. That was so like fear. So let's ok. So what I did there was sometimes I drove a lot of gain going into the send just to hear the reverb again and then I adjusted these parameters in the reverb. So the pre delay determines basically how far front or how far back the singer is. So if the singer is like up and close to you, you'll generally get a long pre delay because the walls are further away. Um But if the singer is further back in the mix, which is kind of what I'm going for with this just due to the sound of it, then you want a smaller pre delay. But again, you just dial it in, using your ears, you find the sweet spot just by listening and, and making adjustments, same goes for uh, reflectivity. That's just how bouncy the walls are. You know, if it's, if the walls are made of marble or stone, you know, they're very hard surfaces, that would be high reflectivity size is what it says on the tin. It's simply the size of the space and the density or time is how many reflections there are, how many different versions of the sound are just bouncing off different surfaces. Ok. So again, you're just dialing it in all of the time you're listening for the sweet spot in every decision that you make with Refurb here as well. I use a little bit of the filter as well just to kind of take the edge off, kind of like I did before. Always experimenting with like low cut and high cut here as well. So I'm kind of halfway there, at least with the refurb. So we'll leave that there for now. Fear. Let's well. No. Cool. So that was a bit on vocal mixing, using dynamics and EQ and a bit of reverb to just help the vocals sit in the mix in this demo. Thanks for watching, see you in the next video.
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