Is Mixing Necessary?
- Thread starter Bookworm2
- Start date
How i describe mixing is like a cooking or making a bread.
You need to prepare all the ingredients and turn it into eatable food.
I mean people like to eat bread but not bread flour for the same reason.
Yes, mixing is mandatory but it's not really that hard anymore, you can mix the entire song with AI and results is quite good, or you might make a mixing request in forums. I believe there is plenty of people who willing to help you out!
You need to prepare all the ingredients and turn it into eatable food.
I mean people like to eat bread but not bread flour for the same reason.
Yes, mixing is mandatory but it's not really that hard anymore, you can mix the entire song with AI and results is quite good, or you might make a mixing request in forums. I believe there is plenty of people who willing to help you out!
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I think if you want to continue making covers (or especially if you venture to making your own original music), you really should learn how to mix - or at least the basics of it. For me personally, it's not really negotiable - I'll listen to a cover even if the tuning is bland (or even completely untuned) but if it doesn't sound mixed I'm clicking off of it immediately. Mixing elevates the vocals, and the greatest tuning on the planet won't mean anything if it's not mixed.
Mixing is supposed to make the vocals blend with the instrumental in such a way that they actually sound like they fit together. Without that, the vocals are just going to sound like they're slapped on top of the instrumental, which isn't really good. It's definitely not easy to mix, especially when you're just starting out, but I promise if you start now you'll find a way that works with you.
There are youtube videos out there that are specifically catered towards mixing vocal synths. Maybe they will help you more than general mixing tutorials? They're geared towards FL Studio users but there's probably general information you can apply to your own DAW if you're using a different one.
GuitarHeroPandaZero's tutorial:
JOEZCafe's tutorial:
Mixing is supposed to make the vocals blend with the instrumental in such a way that they actually sound like they fit together. Without that, the vocals are just going to sound like they're slapped on top of the instrumental, which isn't really good. It's definitely not easy to mix, especially when you're just starting out, but I promise if you start now you'll find a way that works with you.
There are youtube videos out there that are specifically catered towards mixing vocal synths. Maybe they will help you more than general mixing tutorials? They're geared towards FL Studio users but there's probably general information you can apply to your own DAW if you're using a different one.
GuitarHeroPandaZero's tutorial:
JOEZCafe's tutorial:
Mixing is a skill that literally takes years and years to develop. You just have to keep at it.
But it's also highly individual. There is no correct way to mix a song (but there's definitely a wrong way), and it will take a time to develop your own style and/or methods.
Finally, although this video is from the 1990s, it's still the best English language introduction to mixing on the planet:
But it's also highly individual. There is no correct way to mix a song (but there's definitely a wrong way), and it will take a time to develop your own style and/or methods.
Finally, although this video is from the 1990s, it's still the best English language introduction to mixing on the planet:
Time to pull out my most popular YouTube short:
Basic Vocaloid Mixing Tutorial
youtube.com
Mixing is always subjective, and you just use your own taste, but it's a core part of music production. The better you get at it, the more you can let the musical parts shine.
You can break mixing into three essentials: leveling, processing and corrective surgery.
Leveling is literally just setting volume levels. Some things should sound louder than others...like you obviously don't want your cymbals to be louder than your kick drum and vocals. And this might be something you just do as you make the music, not something you spend time on later. Your goal, by the time you're done, is to have it sound cohesive...and not be clipping on the master bus. You want hitting close to zero but not going over. (I'm going to omit the topic of master compression and perceived loudness, because that's more complicated.)
A good way to achieve this is to get your kick drum peaking at -12 and bring up the volume of other parts until they sound good relative to that kick drum. Using that reference will help you build a reasonably balanced mix. e.g. you probably instinctively know you want your kick to be a little louder than your vocal, the cymbals quieter, and your bass instrument to not drown out the kick, etc.
Another tip is to set the gain/volume control in instruments to roughly where you want and use the fader on the mixer board for fine tuning. The faders use an exponential scale, so each notch is a bigger difference in volume than the last, which makes it hard to dial in small adjustments.
Effects: know what reverb is and play with it. It's your friend, and will make even simple sounds sound more impressive. It gives them presence. Pretty much every room you've ever been in, unless it's been treated for recording, has its own flavor it imparts on sound. You hear the small reflections of the sound off walls and ceilings, and your brain makes assumptions about the space based on how it sounds. Your virtual instruments, including vocals, will sound "dry" and artificial without that sense of space. So if you add reverb and dial it in right, you create a sense of all of the sound being in a real space. It's a night and day difference.
There are other effects, like distortion/saturation, delay (echo), etc.. But start with reverb.
Equalizers and compressors are what you could call "corrective." Learning when they can improve things is important, but equally important is not using them without a need. They're much more complicated to learn, but well worth it.
Compressors will give vocals more presence and strength, squashing the loud and quiet parts of the waveform together to make them more consistently loud.
EQs are just are just a fancy volume control that lets you target ranges of frequencies. Like you can cut the low part of your bass so it doesn't step on your kick drum, or cut the low part of cymbals you don't care about to carve out space so your piano can be a little more present.
Combining all of these is especially important for vocals. Vocaloid is just like human recordings: singing sounds flat when you record it, and mixing breathes life into it.
Basic Vocaloid Mixing Tutorial
- YouTube
Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.
Mixing is always subjective, and you just use your own taste, but it's a core part of music production. The better you get at it, the more you can let the musical parts shine.
You can break mixing into three essentials: leveling, processing and corrective surgery.
Leveling is literally just setting volume levels. Some things should sound louder than others...like you obviously don't want your cymbals to be louder than your kick drum and vocals. And this might be something you just do as you make the music, not something you spend time on later. Your goal, by the time you're done, is to have it sound cohesive...and not be clipping on the master bus. You want hitting close to zero but not going over. (I'm going to omit the topic of master compression and perceived loudness, because that's more complicated.)
A good way to achieve this is to get your kick drum peaking at -12 and bring up the volume of other parts until they sound good relative to that kick drum. Using that reference will help you build a reasonably balanced mix. e.g. you probably instinctively know you want your kick to be a little louder than your vocal, the cymbals quieter, and your bass instrument to not drown out the kick, etc.
Another tip is to set the gain/volume control in instruments to roughly where you want and use the fader on the mixer board for fine tuning. The faders use an exponential scale, so each notch is a bigger difference in volume than the last, which makes it hard to dial in small adjustments.
Effects: know what reverb is and play with it. It's your friend, and will make even simple sounds sound more impressive. It gives them presence. Pretty much every room you've ever been in, unless it's been treated for recording, has its own flavor it imparts on sound. You hear the small reflections of the sound off walls and ceilings, and your brain makes assumptions about the space based on how it sounds. Your virtual instruments, including vocals, will sound "dry" and artificial without that sense of space. So if you add reverb and dial it in right, you create a sense of all of the sound being in a real space. It's a night and day difference.
There are other effects, like distortion/saturation, delay (echo), etc.. But start with reverb.
Equalizers and compressors are what you could call "corrective." Learning when they can improve things is important, but equally important is not using them without a need. They're much more complicated to learn, but well worth it.
Compressors will give vocals more presence and strength, squashing the loud and quiet parts of the waveform together to make them more consistently loud.
EQs are just are just a fancy volume control that lets you target ranges of frequencies. Like you can cut the low part of your bass so it doesn't step on your kick drum, or cut the low part of cymbals you don't care about to carve out space so your piano can be a little more present.
Combining all of these is especially important for vocals. Vocaloid is just like human recordings: singing sounds flat when you record it, and mixing breathes life into it.
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There's lots of good advice here already! I will add my method of mixing to the pile. I haven't watched the tutorials linked so I'll likely be repeating some things, but I hope it's useful! I will try and use non-technical language that is accessible to a complete beginner to music production.
Final notes:
Your ears can NOT be trusted
Have you noticed how your brain is able to tune out certain sounds? Our minds have this pesky ability to make noises louder or quieter if we listen to them for a long time. Which means after a long mixing session, you can't trust your ears. Some sounds will simply be a different volume in your brain to the person who listens to your song for the first time. Once I spent a long time obsessively de-essing my vocal tracks only to come back the next day and discover I'd given Solaria a lisp. The way around this audio illusion is to take a break from projects for a while, and get honest feedback from others. This phenomenon is why it's very easy for musicians to make their vocals too loud or too quiet by accident.
Don't feel overwhelmed
The truth is, most people don't have great headphones, and most people don't have the ear training to recognise the intricacies of mixing. A mix that's just okay is good enough for 90% of people. And despite the big list of instructions I just wrote out, you can get a mix 90% of the way there in only a few steps. If this all sounded like waaaay too much, I recommend focusing on three things:
1. Make vocal layers. Export your vocal synth singing the same song with slightly different tones, timings, and pitch. Include a layer where they sing an octave lower than the main melody (pull the entire melody down by 12 notes). Put these layers beneath your main vocal, so you can only just hear them.
2. Set the right volume for your vocals. Always check with friends that your vocals aren't too loud or too quiet.
3. Add a reverb plugin. Choose a preset for a medium sized room, and set it to 10-25% Wet.
This is good enough for most people to enjoy! :D When you feel confident, try following a tutorial about compression. Then try playing with an EQ. Have fun!
What is mixing?
This is worth explaining first, as it's often ambiguous. Mixing means setting the volume of each track, and adding a set of plugins to each sound. These plugins are normally eq, compression, de-essers, saturation, limiting, reverb, and delay. I'll explain what each of these do later.
What hardware do you need?
Your ability to mix is limited by the quality of your headphones/speakers. All headphones/speakers distort the sound coming through them, and make the sound of certain pitches louder or quieter than they are in the original music. Low quality headphones/speakers will also leave out details of the sound (like a low quality image).
The best headphones/speakers for mixing are those that distort the sound the least, which means they don't remove any details, and they don't boost any particular sounds. Sound can also be distorted by your room. Using great speakers in a room that isn't designed for audio mixing will also produce bad results, because the echo of the walls will change the sound you hear. Producers put fuzzy sound-dampening materials on their walls to make their rooms better for mixing.
If you're a beginner, chances are you don't have any of this fancy equipment. Don't despair: you can still mix even with cheap headphones, it just adds some extra challenges. You won't necessarily be able to hear much difference when doing the steps I mention. A handy cheat is to simply get feedback on your work from someone with a good mixing setup, and they will tell you anything you missed.
This is worth explaining first, as it's often ambiguous. Mixing means setting the volume of each track, and adding a set of plugins to each sound. These plugins are normally eq, compression, de-essers, saturation, limiting, reverb, and delay. I'll explain what each of these do later.
What hardware do you need?
Your ability to mix is limited by the quality of your headphones/speakers. All headphones/speakers distort the sound coming through them, and make the sound of certain pitches louder or quieter than they are in the original music. Low quality headphones/speakers will also leave out details of the sound (like a low quality image).
The best headphones/speakers for mixing are those that distort the sound the least, which means they don't remove any details, and they don't boost any particular sounds. Sound can also be distorted by your room. Using great speakers in a room that isn't designed for audio mixing will also produce bad results, because the echo of the walls will change the sound you hear. Producers put fuzzy sound-dampening materials on their walls to make their rooms better for mixing.
If you're a beginner, chances are you don't have any of this fancy equipment. Don't despair: you can still mix even with cheap headphones, it just adds some extra challenges. You won't necessarily be able to hear much difference when doing the steps I mention. A handy cheat is to simply get feedback on your work from someone with a good mixing setup, and they will tell you anything you missed.
Vocal mixing philosophy:
For most music, the best mixing approach for vocals is 'Lots of small changes': less is more. This is because most songs aim for vocals that sound clean and natural, so my mixing process aims to gently enhance the vocals, not make them sound filtered or distorted. Of course, some genres do use more heavily processed vocals! But this is a good place to start learning.
The two stages of vocal mixing:
Mixing happens in two parts: producers call them 'direct' processing and 'bus' processing. 'Direct' means plugins/effects you put directly (hah) onto each individual audio track. 'Bus' means plugins/effects you put on the folder or group of all audio tracks.
Multiple audio tracks? What if I only have one vocalist and no harmonies?
Singers normally record themselves singing their song multiple times. They might sing it with a deeper voice, at a whisper, or just sing it again. These recordings are layered beneath the main vocal to add power and fullness to the final result. They can be quite subtle, but they make the end result sound much more 'professional'. Here's an example of the layers in a mainstream pop song. There are over 50 unique vocal recordings playing in the background! Layering can be even more impactful than mixing when it comes to making a vocal sound as good as the original. Don't panic: even four layers can add a lot. Just remember not to copy and paste the same track: each layer must be uniquely sung.
An important rule:
If the volume of an audio track goes above -6 decibels (db) in your DAW, you are at risk of 'clipping'. Clipping is when your audio starts to make strange popping and clicking noises because it's too loud. Plugins can increase the volume of your vocals, so check how loud they are regularly! Most DAWS will show a big red bar on the volume controls when clipping is occurring.
For most music, the best mixing approach for vocals is 'Lots of small changes': less is more. This is because most songs aim for vocals that sound clean and natural, so my mixing process aims to gently enhance the vocals, not make them sound filtered or distorted. Of course, some genres do use more heavily processed vocals! But this is a good place to start learning.
The two stages of vocal mixing:
Mixing happens in two parts: producers call them 'direct' processing and 'bus' processing. 'Direct' means plugins/effects you put directly (hah) onto each individual audio track. 'Bus' means plugins/effects you put on the folder or group of all audio tracks.
Multiple audio tracks? What if I only have one vocalist and no harmonies?
Singers normally record themselves singing their song multiple times. They might sing it with a deeper voice, at a whisper, or just sing it again. These recordings are layered beneath the main vocal to add power and fullness to the final result. They can be quite subtle, but they make the end result sound much more 'professional'. Here's an example of the layers in a mainstream pop song. There are over 50 unique vocal recordings playing in the background! Layering can be even more impactful than mixing when it comes to making a vocal sound as good as the original. Don't panic: even four layers can add a lot. Just remember not to copy and paste the same track: each layer must be uniquely sung.
An important rule:
If the volume of an audio track goes above -6 decibels (db) in your DAW, you are at risk of 'clipping'. Clipping is when your audio starts to make strange popping and clicking noises because it's too loud. Plugins can increase the volume of your vocals, so check how loud they are regularly! Most DAWS will show a big red bar on the volume controls when clipping is occurring.
Direct processing:
I mix each individual audio track in four steps. The order you add each plugin is important! Your DAW will do each step in order from the top of the list, so changing the order of your plugins will change how the sound is being processed. I will give you an explanation for what each plugin does, but I recommend looking up a specific tutorial for each one, and watching someone use it to get an idea of the normal settings producers use.
1. EQ: EQ plugins give you a set of points on a graph that shows all the different pitches playing inside one sound. By pulling points on the graph you can make the high sounds and low sounds become quieter or louder. EQ allows you to remove parts of the vocal's sound that feel harsh (e.g. a high-pitched fuzzy noise), and enhance parts you like. Where you'll want to EQ will change depending on the voice, and your own taste. A handy automatic EQ plugin is Soothe2, which aims to automatically remove harsh sounds, making the audio smoother. A recommended EQ move is to remove any low frequencies that are present, but outside your range of hearing. Low pitches can build up and sound messy when many are playing at once.
2. Light compression: Compression plugins affect volume. They squash the loudest parts of the audio so they're quieter, resulting in the vocals having a more consistent loudness. So if the singer/vocal synth shouts a section, compression will make that part quieter. It may seem surprising, but compression actually makes the overall sound feel louder, and is done to make the vocal feel more punchy. I don't use much compression on individual tracks, especially when using an artificial voice that already lacks natural changes in volume.
3. De-essing: Depending on the vocal synth, this is a very important step! The sound of consonants where human expel air sharply, such as 's', 't', 'sh', sound louder than other letters, especially over a microphone. So we use de-essing plugins which specifically reduce the volume of these 's' sounds.
4. Reverb: In real life, all sounds have reverb, even if it's very subtle. So you're going to want to add some reverb to your vocals. How much you use depends on the space you want your vocals to sit in: if your singer is supposed to be in a cathedral, the reverb will be very long; if they're in a small room, the reverb will be short.
Producers often put their reverb on a separate track, this allows them to use EQ and compression on just the sound of the reverb, giving them extra control. To find out how to do this in your DAW, search up 'reverb send': this is the technical name for this technique. If you use a reverb send to put your reverb on its own track, you can make it sound extra professional by 'sidechaining' it. Sidechaining is where you make the reverb get quieter when the vocals are playing, so you hear it more at the end of words. This allows you to use longer reverbs without them getting in the way of your vocal. Most pop music (and by extension, most vocal synth music) doesn't use much reverb on the vocals.
5. Delay: Delay is just a fancy term for 'echo'. Like reverb, delay makes the vocals feel like they're coming from a real place, rather than singing directly into your ear. The stronger the delay or reverb, the further away your vocals will sound. Both these plugins make vocals sound more out-of-focus if used more heavily. Because of this, most people use more reverb and delay on backing vocals.
I mix each individual audio track in four steps. The order you add each plugin is important! Your DAW will do each step in order from the top of the list, so changing the order of your plugins will change how the sound is being processed. I will give you an explanation for what each plugin does, but I recommend looking up a specific tutorial for each one, and watching someone use it to get an idea of the normal settings producers use.
1. EQ: EQ plugins give you a set of points on a graph that shows all the different pitches playing inside one sound. By pulling points on the graph you can make the high sounds and low sounds become quieter or louder. EQ allows you to remove parts of the vocal's sound that feel harsh (e.g. a high-pitched fuzzy noise), and enhance parts you like. Where you'll want to EQ will change depending on the voice, and your own taste. A handy automatic EQ plugin is Soothe2, which aims to automatically remove harsh sounds, making the audio smoother. A recommended EQ move is to remove any low frequencies that are present, but outside your range of hearing. Low pitches can build up and sound messy when many are playing at once.
2. Light compression: Compression plugins affect volume. They squash the loudest parts of the audio so they're quieter, resulting in the vocals having a more consistent loudness. So if the singer/vocal synth shouts a section, compression will make that part quieter. It may seem surprising, but compression actually makes the overall sound feel louder, and is done to make the vocal feel more punchy. I don't use much compression on individual tracks, especially when using an artificial voice that already lacks natural changes in volume.
3. De-essing: Depending on the vocal synth, this is a very important step! The sound of consonants where human expel air sharply, such as 's', 't', 'sh', sound louder than other letters, especially over a microphone. So we use de-essing plugins which specifically reduce the volume of these 's' sounds.
4. Reverb: In real life, all sounds have reverb, even if it's very subtle. So you're going to want to add some reverb to your vocals. How much you use depends on the space you want your vocals to sit in: if your singer is supposed to be in a cathedral, the reverb will be very long; if they're in a small room, the reverb will be short.
Producers often put their reverb on a separate track, this allows them to use EQ and compression on just the sound of the reverb, giving them extra control. To find out how to do this in your DAW, search up 'reverb send': this is the technical name for this technique. If you use a reverb send to put your reverb on its own track, you can make it sound extra professional by 'sidechaining' it. Sidechaining is where you make the reverb get quieter when the vocals are playing, so you hear it more at the end of words. This allows you to use longer reverbs without them getting in the way of your vocal. Most pop music (and by extension, most vocal synth music) doesn't use much reverb on the vocals.
5. Delay: Delay is just a fancy term for 'echo'. Like reverb, delay makes the vocals feel like they're coming from a real place, rather than singing directly into your ear. The stronger the delay or reverb, the further away your vocals will sound. Both these plugins make vocals sound more out-of-focus if used more heavily. Because of this, most people use more reverb and delay on backing vocals.
Bus processing:
1. The first thing I put on the group folder is another compression plugin. This is often called 'glue compression' because it 'glues' all the audio tracks together, making them feel like they're part of the same song. I generally use heavier settings than I did on the individual tracks, which means reducing the volume peaks by a higher number of decibels.
2. Saturation: This is an optional step that adds a bit of strength and fullness to the vocal. Saturation plugins are actually just gentle distortion. Saturation adds frequencies to the audio, which can be noisy if done heavily, or add fullness if done subtly. Think of saturation as adding 'texture' to your sound - or like turning up the saturation of an image!
3. EQ again: I do another round of EQ to the vocal group, making sure they sound the way I want when they're all singing together. The best way to understand EQ is to play around with moving the points and listen to how it changes the sound. It makes a lot more sense when you use it!
4. De-ess again: When all the vocals are playing at once, 's' sounds can build up again, which a second de-esser takes care of.
5. Reverb again: To make all the vocals sound like they're in the same location, it helps to put a subtle reverb on the group, giving them a shared reverb.
6. Limiting: Limiter plugins are almost the same as compression plugins, but instead of squashing the volume peaks, they are cut completely. You can think of limiters as very strong compression. So while compression makes sounds louder, limiting can make sounds a LOT louder. I use limiting to make everything sound even and consistent. Not everyone uses a limiter on their vocals at this stage.
1. The first thing I put on the group folder is another compression plugin. This is often called 'glue compression' because it 'glues' all the audio tracks together, making them feel like they're part of the same song. I generally use heavier settings than I did on the individual tracks, which means reducing the volume peaks by a higher number of decibels.
2. Saturation: This is an optional step that adds a bit of strength and fullness to the vocal. Saturation plugins are actually just gentle distortion. Saturation adds frequencies to the audio, which can be noisy if done heavily, or add fullness if done subtly. Think of saturation as adding 'texture' to your sound - or like turning up the saturation of an image!
3. EQ again: I do another round of EQ to the vocal group, making sure they sound the way I want when they're all singing together. The best way to understand EQ is to play around with moving the points and listen to how it changes the sound. It makes a lot more sense when you use it!
4. De-ess again: When all the vocals are playing at once, 's' sounds can build up again, which a second de-esser takes care of.
5. Reverb again: To make all the vocals sound like they're in the same location, it helps to put a subtle reverb on the group, giving them a shared reverb.
6. Limiting: Limiter plugins are almost the same as compression plugins, but instead of squashing the volume peaks, they are cut completely. You can think of limiters as very strong compression. So while compression makes sounds louder, limiting can make sounds a LOT louder. I use limiting to make everything sound even and consistent. Not everyone uses a limiter on their vocals at this stage.
...wait what?!
There's another stage to processing vocals that a lot of people in the vocal synth community leave out. Mastering!
Mastering is simply a second round of mixing that producers do after they merge the layers of a song together. If you're making covers, the instrumental you're using is likely already mastered. This means it can be a good idea to do some mastering to your vocal so it matches the instrumental.
First, export your vocals as one track. I normally open a new project for mastering, and start on a fresh file.
Mastering uses the same plugins as before, but normally with more subtle settings:
1. Subtle saturation: This is about adding a little extra warmth and fullness. Go easy on saturation if you're dealing with engine noise already.
2. Reductive EQ: This means only reducing the volume of sounds by pulling points down. Don't boost any sounds. Again this is about removing any harsh frequencies, and unnecessary low-pitch noise.
3. Compression: I use very subtle, gentle compression; the purpose of this again is to glue everything together.
4. Multiband compression: This is useful if your vocals and instrumental still don't feel like they quite match. Multiband compression is just compression that uses different settings for high and low sounds simultaneously. So it might leave low sounds uncompressed, but compress the high sounds heavily, making the high sounds feel louder. This changes the overall tone of your vocals. Musicians use words like brighter, darker, warmer, etc. to describe the changes in feeling that a multiband compression can bring. Play around with it!
5. EQ again: If you want, you can use both additive and reductive EQ at this point to make any more tonal changes to the sound of the vocals.
6. Limiting: Mastering limiting exists primarily to boost the volume of your vocals up to the same volume as the instrumental (but make sure you're not clipping).
There's another stage to processing vocals that a lot of people in the vocal synth community leave out. Mastering!
Mastering is simply a second round of mixing that producers do after they merge the layers of a song together. If you're making covers, the instrumental you're using is likely already mastered. This means it can be a good idea to do some mastering to your vocal so it matches the instrumental.
First, export your vocals as one track. I normally open a new project for mastering, and start on a fresh file.
Mastering uses the same plugins as before, but normally with more subtle settings:
1. Subtle saturation: This is about adding a little extra warmth and fullness. Go easy on saturation if you're dealing with engine noise already.
2. Reductive EQ: This means only reducing the volume of sounds by pulling points down. Don't boost any sounds. Again this is about removing any harsh frequencies, and unnecessary low-pitch noise.
3. Compression: I use very subtle, gentle compression; the purpose of this again is to glue everything together.
4. Multiband compression: This is useful if your vocals and instrumental still don't feel like they quite match. Multiband compression is just compression that uses different settings for high and low sounds simultaneously. So it might leave low sounds uncompressed, but compress the high sounds heavily, making the high sounds feel louder. This changes the overall tone of your vocals. Musicians use words like brighter, darker, warmer, etc. to describe the changes in feeling that a multiband compression can bring. Play around with it!
5. EQ again: If you want, you can use both additive and reductive EQ at this point to make any more tonal changes to the sound of the vocals.
6. Limiting: Mastering limiting exists primarily to boost the volume of your vocals up to the same volume as the instrumental (but make sure you're not clipping).
Final notes:
Your ears can NOT be trusted
Have you noticed how your brain is able to tune out certain sounds? Our minds have this pesky ability to make noises louder or quieter if we listen to them for a long time. Which means after a long mixing session, you can't trust your ears. Some sounds will simply be a different volume in your brain to the person who listens to your song for the first time. Once I spent a long time obsessively de-essing my vocal tracks only to come back the next day and discover I'd given Solaria a lisp. The way around this audio illusion is to take a break from projects for a while, and get honest feedback from others. This phenomenon is why it's very easy for musicians to make their vocals too loud or too quiet by accident.
Don't feel overwhelmed
The truth is, most people don't have great headphones, and most people don't have the ear training to recognise the intricacies of mixing. A mix that's just okay is good enough for 90% of people. And despite the big list of instructions I just wrote out, you can get a mix 90% of the way there in only a few steps. If this all sounded like waaaay too much, I recommend focusing on three things:
1. Make vocal layers. Export your vocal synth singing the same song with slightly different tones, timings, and pitch. Include a layer where they sing an octave lower than the main melody (pull the entire melody down by 12 notes). Put these layers beneath your main vocal, so you can only just hear them.
2. Set the right volume for your vocals. Always check with friends that your vocals aren't too loud or too quiet.
3. Add a reverb plugin. Choose a preset for a medium sized room, and set it to 10-25% Wet.
This is good enough for most people to enjoy! :D When you feel confident, try following a tutorial about compression. Then try playing with an EQ. Have fun!
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Good point regarding headphones. "Monitoring headphones" is the term usually used to refer to headphones that avoid adjusting the sound. I use Sony MDR-7506 headphones, which run around $100. Other brands like Audio Technica, Senheiser and Shure make similar ones at different price points.
I mix on those, then I give myself some time to rest and "forget" and then try listening on phone speakers, AirPods and my car stereo to listen for things that don't sound good, so I can try and correct them later. It'll always sound different on different speakers, but it's good to check that there's still clarity and it sounds okay.
I mix on those, then I give myself some time to rest and "forget" and then try listening on phone speakers, AirPods and my car stereo to listen for things that don't sound good, so I can try and correct them later. It'll always sound different on different speakers, but it's good to check that there's still clarity and it sounds okay.
Also I would like to add I am deaf in one ear so I have to mix in mono but want to achieve stereo and everyone here offers extremely useful feedback to help your mix improve !
I’d suggest that you don’t need expensive gear, just use whatever you already have. Cheap earbuds, desktop speakers or even the built-in laptop speakers will work. Audio gear isn’t cheap. At the end hobby is suppose to be fun, not money pit. Enjoy.
I'd like to recommend also the Yamaha Studio Monitor Speaker HS series (the HS3 is already good at great price, if you have more budget go for HS4 or HS5), they give a crystal clear, well balanced audio quality and perfect both during the producing and the mixing process. They are like the de-facto studio speaker used by most professionals (like the Sony MDR-7506 monitor headphones). They are active speakers, it means they have built-in amplifier and run on their own. The HS3 for example are bi-amplified (for both tweeter and woofer) for about 45W.
Here is one good HS3 video review and a nice tech analysis.
Here is one good HS3 video review and a nice tech analysis.
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