Episode 30 - Mixing Vocals: Pt. 1
Show Notes
Mixing Vocals: Pt 1
Live with Matt Rad - Episode 30
Dec 1, 2020
w/ Jon Castelli - Week 27
Show notes by: Bradley Will
Jon finds it ironic that the single interest topics get the focus while a mix is about the combination of all of them.
If you focus on one thing for too long you will lose perspective.
You have to maintain focus on one element when it’s ripe and then move on to the next thing.
Jon starts with listening to the vocals:
What is the vocal doing in the rough mix?
What is it doing in stems?
What is it doing in the context of the song?
You are receiving someone’s best effort at a mix.
It is up to you to then raise it to it’s highest level.
Jon prefers not to have control over the choices that the producer has already made. People are used to that rough mix.
Jon wants the high-end to not be “up” all the time. He wants the vocals to be present in the midrange all of the time, but the top end should be dynamic and come and go with the groove or the high hats.
R-Vox does not allow for that. It clamps down for immediate presence.
Do your best to not rely on it. Set up your own chain to recreate the effect and have more control over it.
When Jon gets a stem that was clearly over-processed, it really hurts Jon. It hurts the record.
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For anyone who is doing the job of a mix engineer, you need to know every part of the process that leads you up to where you’re at.
Know how to record a vocal.
If a vocal sounds thin, in context to what? It may be the right move in the context of the song.
That comes down to taste, practice, and experience.
Jon tries to be very full of intent in his vocal moves.
Q: How do I deal with a bad vocal?
Example: Vocal is too boomy.
First, identify why it’s boomy.
Is there too much low end EQ, or not enough high end on mic, or too much proximity to mic?
Each of these have different solutions.
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Jon doesn’t think getting vocals present in a mix is a creative process. He sees the problem as a utilitarian one.
The vocals should be the most present thing in the mix. Don’t expend your creative energy fussing with this concept. Once you figure out how to achieve this, then re-use that technique to get it there so you can be creative with the rest of the mix.
Air In Vocals:
Jon filtered a pop vocal down to 15k this morning. There was nothing there that was needed. It fit into the mix better. The vocal needed to be a little more lo-fi for the mids to cut through the mix.
If someone says to Jon that “this needs more air” that it needs less of something else.
Filtering is always the first move. Low end and high end.
Oftentimes if you want to hear more of a given frequency, rather than boost it, try using saturation to increase density or removing other frequencies that compete with it in the other musical elements.
You have to decide what is going to occupy the highest range of your record.
Bruce Swedien’s vocals are very focused in their frequency range.
Background Vocals:
Ideally you would use a different mic, preamp, and singer to record the background vocals.
The stacks usually go into a glued buss that is processed differently from the lead vocal.
You want the lead vocal to contrast the backgrounds.
You don’t want the stacks to phase out, so you should use different tools, voices, etc to get them to be sonically different.
lol I love watching Jon’s eyes go wide when he reads a dumb comment.
If you’re going to tune background vocals, only tune one side. Otherwise you get phase, and imaging issues.
Melodyne is particularly bad at this.
Don’t tune your backgrounds in isolation. Tune them into each other.
Eventide H3000 micro-shift preset. That’s the saver, right there.
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Sometimes Jon will saturate specific phrases because in their rough mix the limiter was breaking up the vocal
Q: Where do you start on a vocal mix?
Jon:
1. Maintain and consolidate dynamics.
Clip gain, a transparent limiter like Faraday Limiter.
Clip gain into the limiter as you do this.
You’re evening out the dynamics before you go into a compressor.
2. Broad Stroke tonal balance.
You may need to do some broad-stroke EQ moves to match tonal balance from section to section.
This is a fixing move and an enhancing move.
3. Surgical EQ Moves
Start doing your small boosts and cuts to control mids, harshness, or whatever.
Jon loves using dynamic EQ’s for this. Less phase issues and you can go narrower.
This is where he adds De-esses.
He also clip-gains esses or breaths.
Jon uses Weiss De-esser because it’s also a high-end saturator. He thinks it’s a magic tool. Especially on pop. To get a Rich Costey high-end boost into a de-esser to get the aggression.
A multi-band saturator can get a similar effect. Just don’t over-do this.
This is never done solo’ed. It’s always done while listening to the mix.Jon will only ever solo to check if there’s a pop/click. And if he does he does it with another instrument for context.
4. Additive Moves
Transient shaping after any limiting/compression
Broad-stroke saturation for energy and excitement.
Jon uses the Spectre saturator for this. He uses a pretty wide Q on his boosts. This is treated like a volume knob on the instrument.
Reverbs, Delays, and Time-Based Effects:
Jon is receiving vocals with a lot of character already.
Jon will put slap delay on a vocal in a chorus if it needs it.
Jon is using Valhalla Delay cause he likes the sound of it.
Jon will often print the effects sends as stems in order to keep the character of this so that the sound doesn’t change once he changes the lead vocal sound.
Jon will de-ess a reverb beforehand.
Jon will also send a dry, untreated vocal to the verb. This way the verb hears a more dynamic vocal than the processed lead vocals.
Experiment with EQ’ing and saturating your effects.
This is a highly creative
Try auto-tuning your reverb send but not the lead vocal. Tune the verb send super hard to make the verb come back harmonically perfect.
Jon is pretty subtle with the original/creative moves, but he still gets away with a lot of it.
If people don’t like it they’ll let him know. But it’s important that they hear the intention.
Clicks and Pops:
Pro Tools is better because you can get down the waveform level and draw in new waveforms to draw out the pop.
That’s how Matt and Tony Maserati do it.
Izotope RX is fine. Jon likes it.
He never batch processes a file. Just do the spot edits as you need them cause it can get rid of transients or consonants that you’d like to keep.
Q: How do you handle buzz?
Try recording it better in the future.
If Matt gets a buzz and he has to use it he’ll use RX8.
Q: Subtractive or additive EQ on vocals?
Jon:
Both. Jon does his additive work with Spectre.
Jon tries not to be “old-school” in his approach to mixing. He’s looking for fresh ways to achieve the effects that he wants.
Challenge From Jon:
Don’t use a shelf EQ for a month. Be more specific will your bell curves
Raise the volume when you think you want to raise the shelf and then be subtractive in your EQ.
