Mixing vocals...

[AdamWathan]

Hey guys, I've never tracked vocals until last week and I'm just wondering what you guys do with them to make them "fit" in the mix and sound polished as if they are part of the song? Here's a shitty test mix from the session I was doing...

http://www.ashesofthefallen.net/carelessrough2.mp3

The vocals just don't sound "right" to me, they sound like they are on top of everything and not blended in with the rest of the mix if that makes any sense. What do you guys normally do as far as panning is concerned on doubled/tripled vocal tracks? What do you set the levels at proportionally to each other? How much compression, what sort of/how much verb? Hopefully someone can get me started on the right foot, thanks guys!

 

[ahjteam]

George Michael, eh? But the vocals being too much on top of everything... did you try the most obvious one, just drop the volume?

PS: If you ask me, ditch the intro, eg. just one "bling" and then straight to the main riff, A) because the drums sound really artificial alone and B) the intro is really boring. Also check the tune of the clean vocals on some of the choruses, they sounded a bit off tune to me.

 

[Skinny Viking]

little bit of verb, little bit of echo ... just to where you can hear the effect pretty well with the vox soloed out...

with everything going at once you won't really hear the effect much but it add some nice depth and blending to the vox. Also some tasteful compression and EQ .. get the harsher frequencies in the voice out, they don't seem so overbearing

just a thought

Cheers!

 

[AdamWathan]

George Michael, eh? But the vocals being too much on top of everything... did you try the most obvious one, just drop the volume?

PS: If you ask me, ditch the intro, eg. just one "bling" and then straight to the main riff, A) because the drums sound really artificial alone and B) the intro is really boring. Also check the tune of the clean vocals on some of the choruses, they sounded a bit off tune to me.

Haha the recording isn't even remotely done, the intro normally has acoustic guitars in the background and an electric guitar playing the saxophone lead, there's also a couple of vocal sections that aren't in there... Here's a live video of it though with all the parts to get an idea of how it SHOULD sound...

[ame]http://youtube.com/watch?v=xK8AXOKUOFo[/ame]

Thanks for the tips though guys, I'll play around a bit more with reverb, I haven't tried any echo though so I'll give that a shot. What about the double tracking stuff, how do you guys normally treat the tracks?

 

[Skinny Viking]

for me, with just straight doubled vocal parts I usually have sends on both tracks going to my verb/echo aux channels but I try to send less of my signal from the doubled part. So, and these are bullshit numbers, let's say I have my main vocal with a send to my echo set to -5.5 and the verb at -12 .... I might have the doubled part send set at -9.5 for the echo and -15 for the verb. This is just so the actual sound of the effect doesn't become too overbearing unless that is what you are going for. I just like the doubled part to jump in and out a little cleaner and dryer, seems to have a little more impact that way without pushing the edges of the effects out too far past the phrase. Of course you'd have to experiment a lot to find what you like/are going for but its worked ok for me so far like this.

Harmonies I do a bit of the same thing but might adjust the balance a little differently ... ie, not as wet as the main but not as dry as a doubled part, unless you are trying to hide a harmony that is a little shitty sounding but all you have to work with

Cheers!
www.myspace.com/shadowdancemusic