Jul 17, 2006 05:10 pm A link for a listen might help here.
But have you used any reverb, like a nice gentle small room or something to help settle the vox into the mix?
Phantom of the opera song... FINALLY DONE
Posted on Jul 17, 2006 01:45 am
Drizzt
Member Since: Dec 23, 2005
Phew... it has taken ages, but it is finally done.
This is my first attempt at dealing with vocals in the mix, and found it very difficult... much harder than guitars. I could really use some advice.
Is there any standard... EQing... that is usually done? I tried scooping a chunk out of some of the instrments' EQ and boosting the vocals in that area... and it seemed to help, but not significantly. I still feel like I have vocals resting on top of music, instead of everything blending smoothly together.
Edit (Do'h): www.soundclick.com/bands/...m?bandID=481743
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Jul 17, 2006 05:10 pm A link for a listen might help here.
But have you used any reverb, like a nice gentle small room or something to help settle the vox into the mix?
Jul 17, 2006 06:21 pm Wow, I'm sorry. I must have been really tired when I posted this.
www.soundclick.com/bands/...m?bandID=481743
I did indeed use reverb.
Jul 17, 2006 06:32 pm OK, I'm leaving for a meeting right now but will try and give a listen tonight or tommorrow afternoon.
Noize
Jul 17, 2006 09:46 pm Ok, I cant listen as loud as I would like, But here is the skinny at lower listening level. It doesnt really sound to bad with the vox where they are. They really arent that far out front of everything.
They do stand on the guitars in certain places, but I will have to give a much better listen tommorrow and see if I can find anything that might help get them settled in a little better. Honestly I think working the EQ in small amounts here and there might help.
The reverb you used sounded really good, especially on the female vox. It gave her voice some great presence in then mix. From the quick listen I would say you have done a very good job so far with the mix.
I'll give another listen tommorrow and let you know what I come up with.
Again, very nice job.
Noize
Jul 17, 2006 09:57 pm Awesome, thanks Noize.
The female vocals were a bit of a challenge, but it worked out well. She ran an sm58, without a preamp, through her computer's integrated sound card (the mic jack too). It was full of static and was very quiet, but luckily Cool Edit had some good tools we could work with.
There was an EQ preset in Cool Edit called Vocal Presence (cut or boost). I did the cut on the instrumentation, and the boost on the vocals.
I look forward to some better EQ help :)
Jul 18, 2006 01:30 am I made a few changes. You mentioned you liked the reverb on Kelli's vocals, so I added the same one onto mine as well so there isn't as much of a contrast between the two of us.
I also undid the EQ adjustment I made to the instrumentation at the intro so that it didn't sound so muddy. I think it sounds a lot better, but would still like some more EQ tips ;D
Jul 18, 2006 10:50 am What I like to do when adding vocals is set up a master insert effect that has a slight scoop in the vocal range, from around 1Khz to 4Khz or so. Then I group all of my non-vocal tracks together and send them through this master insert, and voila! Now I've got a little notch for the vocals to sit in. Its a little easier than going to each track individually and scooping out a little notch for the vocals.
I'll give this a listen when I get a chance and see if I have any input. Sorry, I've been terrible about listening to user's music around here lately.
Jul 18, 2006 03:42 pm Hey that sounds similar to what I did!
I made a mixdown of all the instruments, scooped out a small portion between 1khz to 4khz, then made a mixdown of the vocals and boosted those frequencies instead of taking them out.
I only did this because it was a suggested preset in Cool Edit though. I don't understand why this helped, when all the vocals seemed to be between 100-1000 hz.
Jul 18, 2006 07:00 pm That is much better, your moving along nicely with this. I would call it almost done really. The reverb on you vocal did the trick with evening them out some what. The only place I notice them fading now is when the two of you hit the very lowest registers in some passages.
Otherwise I think the mix is sounding really good now. I will try and make some time to give it a couple more listens and see if I can peg a certain area to try.
One thing is if you have something along the lines of a paragraphic EQ that you can set one section to boost slightly at 1k to 2 k with a fairly narrow Q and the next section right next to it at 2k to 4k and boost that slightly more, that might help with a little more seperation. Try boosting the EQ before the reverb is added if at all possible.
Jul 18, 2006 08:53 pm Yea, when we are going down the scale for "the phantom of the opera is there" it begins to fade away slightly, especially my vocals. I'll try boosting some EQ at that part when I get some spare time (in addition to some other lower parts).
I did try adding the same amount of reverb on my vocals as I did to Kelli's, but as I recorded mine with a fair amount to begin with, it just ended up being too much. In the end I just added a small amount on top of what I already had, and it worked out quite well. I think it would be best if I recorded my vocals dry from now on :)
I'm glad you think it is coming along though. It is hard to judge the quality of one of my songs especially after having listened to it so many times... it all tends to sound the same at one point or another.
Jul 18, 2006 10:32 pm As a note here. I never record with reverb on anymore. In the old days it was kind of a given at times. But after the digital revolution began that was the end of ever recording with FX on anything for me.
Maybe the patches on my PODxt beng the exception there.
Jul 19, 2006 08:04 pm Gotcha :) Thanks Noize. You're always a big help.
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