Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC053 April 2019 - Winners announced
Posted: Tue May 28, 2019 11:30 CEST
Hey Morelia,
so here's a detailed view of what I did with your vocals:
All 5 verse vocals go into a group, which goes into the final VOCALS group, which goes to the master track (see the first 4 images). I treated the chorus vocals in a similar way, and the shouts/BVs I sent to dry one group and processed them together.
I'll concentrate on the main vocal of the verse for this rundown.
(I only used the vocal tracks that are visible)
in pic 5, you can see the plugins I used on the main verse track:
strong compression -> L1 to tame the strong peaks -> lo-cut -> C6 multiband for harshness/sibilance -> mannyM tripleD again for harshness -> C1 for 370hz narrow dynamic comp processing -> HM EQ to raise around 300hz again (broad) -> scheps EQ for highs/character -> RVox for compression.
that's a lot of plugins, but they all do something, a lot of them do only a little, and its always super important where in the chain you use your plugin. So for example, ideally de-essing should have happened before any compression, but that didn't seem to work, don't know why.
I used this chain on all verse and chorus tracks, fine tuning here and there (more de-esser on BVs, hi-cut on LOW vers vocal...)
pic 6: on most vers vocal tracks, I also edited the clip gain of certain parts (ye-heah in the beginning etc.), because they were much louder than the rest, didn't what to do that with a compressor plugin.
I used melodyne on certain parts of all vocals. in the verse and chorus, to clean up a little bit. in the shouts/BV parts, to align the pitch of the many vocals. To me this was a choice of style rather than quality.
pic 7: the vocal chain on the VOCALS group before going to the master track. this processing is dependant on the whole track and instrumentation.
here's a link to the 5 verse tracks BEFORE they go into the 1st group. (the L2 on the group track is, again, to tame the strong peaks, shouldn't do more than a few db).
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/qm2w4uim7sl7 ... kVRoa?dl=0
listening back to my mix now, I agree, It could be a little more beefy, have a little more bottom to give it weight...
basically the difficult thing for me is always dynamics. We want dynamics, but we don't want dynamics. We want it loud, but pleasant sounding. so you do all kinds of things to bring everything to a nice level and balance, and then you want to make shure that it all sounds interesting still. I find it impressive how sometimes squashing everything with high compression sounds terrible, and sometimes it makes it sound amazing (ie. drums!)
anyway Morelia, I hope this is of some use to you (or anyone else)
cheers & best of luck!
overview
levels vocals verse
vocals -> group1 -> group2 -> 2bus
overview chorus and backings/shouts
plugin chain main vocal verse
audio clips manual levels verse 1
plugin chain group all vocals:
so here's a detailed view of what I did with your vocals:
All 5 verse vocals go into a group, which goes into the final VOCALS group, which goes to the master track (see the first 4 images). I treated the chorus vocals in a similar way, and the shouts/BVs I sent to dry one group and processed them together.
I'll concentrate on the main vocal of the verse for this rundown.
(I only used the vocal tracks that are visible)
in pic 5, you can see the plugins I used on the main verse track:
strong compression -> L1 to tame the strong peaks -> lo-cut -> C6 multiband for harshness/sibilance -> mannyM tripleD again for harshness -> C1 for 370hz narrow dynamic comp processing -> HM EQ to raise around 300hz again (broad) -> scheps EQ for highs/character -> RVox for compression.
that's a lot of plugins, but they all do something, a lot of them do only a little, and its always super important where in the chain you use your plugin. So for example, ideally de-essing should have happened before any compression, but that didn't seem to work, don't know why.
I used this chain on all verse and chorus tracks, fine tuning here and there (more de-esser on BVs, hi-cut on LOW vers vocal...)
pic 6: on most vers vocal tracks, I also edited the clip gain of certain parts (ye-heah in the beginning etc.), because they were much louder than the rest, didn't what to do that with a compressor plugin.
I used melodyne on certain parts of all vocals. in the verse and chorus, to clean up a little bit. in the shouts/BV parts, to align the pitch of the many vocals. To me this was a choice of style rather than quality.
pic 7: the vocal chain on the VOCALS group before going to the master track. this processing is dependant on the whole track and instrumentation.
here's a link to the 5 verse tracks BEFORE they go into the 1st group. (the L2 on the group track is, again, to tame the strong peaks, shouldn't do more than a few db).
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/qm2w4uim7sl7 ... kVRoa?dl=0
listening back to my mix now, I agree, It could be a little more beefy, have a little more bottom to give it weight...
basically the difficult thing for me is always dynamics. We want dynamics, but we don't want dynamics. We want it loud, but pleasant sounding. so you do all kinds of things to bring everything to a nice level and balance, and then you want to make shure that it all sounds interesting still. I find it impressive how sometimes squashing everything with high compression sounds terrible, and sometimes it makes it sound amazing (ie. drums!)
anyway Morelia, I hope this is of some use to you (or anyone else)
cheers & best of luck!
overview
levels vocals verse
vocals -> group1 -> group2 -> 2bus
overview chorus and backings/shouts
plugin chain main vocal verse
audio clips manual levels verse 1
plugin chain group all vocals: