Vocals Mixing and Mastering

We humans are talkative creatures and so are attuned to speech. Therefore, if your track features vocals, be prepared for the fact that people will want to hear them, and you need to make sure that they can, so the most important effect for vocals is compression. Compression smooths out dynamic differences inherent in most live vocal performances, allowing vocals to cut through a mix and really make their presence felt.

Beyond compression, you can add as much or as little effect as you want, but you must be very careful not to get carried away. Reverb is great but can sound unnatural and distracting in excessive amounts – subtle delay is often less intrusive. Chorus can thicken backing vocals, but layering alternative takes of a real-life performance (double-tracking) will usually sound much better. Try different things and err on the side of caution – at least until you've been complemented on your mixes by no less than three other musicians who's music and production skills you respect!

Natural or processed?

Modern music must annoy microphone manufacturers. They spend vast amounts of money and countless man-hours developing accurate microphones, only for some cretinous producer to come along and render it all meaningless with Auto-Tune in two minutes!

But sometimes effected vocals sound awesome. The one important question you should ask when heavily processing vocals, though, is whether to enhance a great vocal or distract attention from a bad one? Heavy vocal processing is a bold move – it's often the thing a listener will remember. If that's cool with you, great. If not, maybe you should think again. And don't forgot you needn't apply it all the time – radical effects can be applied at key points. And the last thing to remember is that applying extreme vocal processing to a track runs the risk of making it an historical joke before It's even finished. „Do you believe in life after love?“

Mixing for a natural vocal sound

1. First we add a compressor. The compression also brings up any unpleasant mouth clicks and headphone spill, so we silence audio that isn't vocal or breath noise. We also add a little reverb, but not too much as our vocal sounds close and breathy and shouldn't be made to sound large.

2. Next we apply a low cut from around 20OHz. Where you set this depends on the type of track you're making and the voice. The lower the setting, the more natural the sound, but the less clarity it will have in a full mix. We also add a spreader to increase the sense of space.

3. An analogue modelling multiband compressor is added. Tuned to the middle frequency of the vocal. We set this by sweeping the frequency from around 30OHz to 7kHz until we find the sweet spot. Finally, Sonic Maxlmlzer gives vocal a crisp, professional sheen.

Vocoded vocals

1. Vocoding is a classic extreme vocal effect and since our vocal is quite monophonlc we've decided to use a vocoder to make a tune out of it. First we open the vocoder, select a tone (the sound which will be played) and choose our vocal channel as the sidechain input.

2. We then lower the vocal channel and play the notes we want the vocoder to play (using the quietened vocal for timing). Now we select the output of the vocal so that only the vocoded sound is played. We then triple up the vocoded notes at one-octave intervals.

3. Next we add some compression to the vocoder channel, followed by a bass cut at around 200Hz. To finish, a stereo spreader for a natural sound, a Vintage Warmer for that valve-processed vintage vocoder tone, and a Sonic Maxlmlser to crisp it all up and make it shine.