getting vocals to 'sit' nicely

[clare_bear]

Any tips on getting vocals to sit nicely within the mix rather than sound as if they are stuck on top of the backing track?

I guess reverb is the way to go, but how, where, why and how much? I think I've been told before that putting some reverb on aux channels across all the tracks helps it to blend better, but I've not been successful at it so far!

Any help gratefully received! I'm using Tracktion on my laptop for this, BTW.

[Bokonon]

The problem you are experienceing is that you different parts sound like they are in different rooms/spaces. People's ears use relative levels and types of reverb to determine lots of information about sounds. What you need to do is make the vocal, sound as though it is in roughly 'the same room' as the rest of the music. The best way to do this is consider the way the rest of the music sounds, and emulate that as best you can.

This ofcourse you have used ambient microphones on your instruments - which is not always the case - so if your instruments are close miced and your vocals are close miced then it can be useful to set up a single reverb sound - that you quite like, there are many to choose from, I'd say to use sparingly unless you are going for a lost in a cave sound - then place this on a pre-fade aux and set the mix to 100% wet (this means that you return channel will just have the reverb on it, and not all the other stuff) once its set up, add a little bit to your parts - I would warn against reverb on bassy parts, but it can sometimes work - anything else is fair game in general.

As for settings - presets are generally quite descriptive, but if you want to know more about the actual settings, and creating your own presets, I can run you through them if you want (actually, is there a tutorial on music radar?)

[Bokonon]

Indeed:

http://www.musicradar.com/tuition/te...-reverb-123778
http://www.musicradar.com/tuition/te...erclass-123997

[Danny1969]

It's really just a case of EQ, compression and then reverb \ delay.

For EQ try cutting just about everything below 100hz to shave off most of the unwanted low end. Try boosting between 3 and 5k to help it cut through and maybe a boost between 12 and 16k if you want more a more top end air'ey sound that some female singers like.

For compression start with threshold at about -20bB, set the ratio to about 4:1 and leave the attack & release set halfway. Solo your vocal channel and see if you can get the vocal to level to stay fairly level. Too much compression will make it pump, too little won't do much at all. It's really hard to give exact settings because it depends on how hot you recorded the vocal and how up and down the vocal level is. And what compressor you have.
It's the above two that will mainly help the vocal sit in a mix rather than on it. Although fashions change and if you gave a 2000 recording to a 50's engineer I expect he would be horrified, as they used to put the vocal about a million dB above everything else.


For reverb \ delay set up an aux send on the vocal channel, post fader and bus it to what ever bus you stick your reverb plugin on. Plate reverb is popular with vocals so see if you have a Plate preset.
For delay use another aux send and bus and try a medium delay, a popular trick here is to make the speed of the delay time proportional to the songs BPM.
One you set your reverb and delay buses up you control the amount of reverb and delay by varying the send levels on the vocal channel, generally leaving the bus faders static as other things like drums will also be sending to the same reverb bus etc. As a rule of thumb small delays, often more than one can sound better in a modern way than plain reverb. You might not notice these small delays on a lot of records without listening with headphones, the effect is understated but very effective in thickering the vocal.

[Bokonon]

@ Danny

Do you not feel that your reccomendations are just slightly prescriptive - given that we've not even heard a note of the track...

[Danny1969]

Originally Posted by Bokonon

@ Danny

Do you not feel that your reccomendations are just slightly prescriptive - given that we've not even heard a note of the track...

Yes, but I was trying to give some general settings Clare could try rather than being too vague to be useful. It is difficult because your right, every song and every singer is different. I do have a slight advantage though having listened to Clares songs on the old Intermusic forum so hopefully have an inkling of what she's aiming for.

[clare_bear]

Thanks, guys. I'll try some of this out. No doubt I'll still need help once I've posted the track, so you can be more specific then if necessary!

Bokonon - thanks for the links and offer of explanations - you may live to regret that

I think it was you Danny who mentioned using aux sends/returns and reverb/delay on one of my previous efforts - looks like I still can't do it! I currently have some reverb and delays as plug-ins on the individual tracks, and I've been reading the 'Mixing Engineer's Handbook' to try to help me understand EQing and all this other stuff. I'm beginning to feel that I'm making a better attempt at it this time, but I still have a loooonnnggg way to go!

I'll try some of the above tricks and see where I get to.

Cheers

[clare_bear]

Any suggestions on good free reverbs/delays for vocals? I have the Kjaerhuis ones, but I haven't tried anything else? Oh no, I tell a lie, Glaceverb is nice, but takes up too much cpu power for my limited processing

Cheers

[jac79dj]

Originally Posted by clare_bear

Any suggestions on good free reverbs/delays for vocals? I have the Kjaerhuis ones, but I haven't tried anything else? Oh no, I tell a lie, Glaceverb is nice, but takes up too much cpu power for my limited processing

Cheers

if cash is an issue you can use 2 native reverbs that come with your host and put them in series have the first set to a small setting of say a room preset which then goes into a hall reverb. this works well for alot of things but it will never compete with your lexicons tc reverbs of the world but its a good technique none the less. there is also SIR its free and is a convolution reverb irs are available on the net but with this being a convolution reverb it willuse a fair bit of cpu. any of the reverbs that come with sonar (my weapon of choice} are good.

my own technique for sitting vocals into a track are to add a reverb track and send from high parts of the drums {snare, hihats toms etc} and the vocal but the rule of thumb i use is to ad send untill i can hear the reverb then back it off a little so it is barely audiable.
after this a good multiband compressor across the main output helps all gell into place.
hope this helps

[clare_bear]

Thanks very much, jac, that looks really useful.