Need some vocal EQ pointers

[christian_roth]

I am really lousy at dialing in good vocals. I looked around here and I couldn't find some good threads. Can you kindly point me to some good stuff?

The pop stuff I listen to seems very trebley with the lows cut significantly. My vocals are probably battling with the heavier guitars.

What I am doing right now is doing a high pass at 125 Hz, run some light compression (2:1), and then 2-3 DBs of some high shelving around 4 kHz. Thanks!

[MoreSpaceEcho]

tough to say without hearing anything, but if your vox are battling with guitars, you could try moving the high pass up a bit higher, and dig in considerably more with the compression. most pop vox are super compressed.

if you recorded the vox right up on the mic, you could well have a bunch of unnecessary low end due to proximity effect....i'm mixing a record right now that has this problem...female vox...besides the high pass, i had to do some pretty big bell cuts at like 100 and 200 just to make them sound 'normal'.

in general i'd say try and cut the lows before boosting the highs. some folks like to boost the real high stuff at say 12-15k...can't say i'm a fan of that myself, but it does help get that annoying pop sheen thing happening.

[lefthanddoes]

They might be battling for midrange space. There's like a midrange 'forwardness' to vocals I usually find to be between 400-600hz, while the forwardness in guitars is more like 900-1.1k. (ymmv)

You could try cutting the vocal range (start with 500) out of the guitars. You could get pretty drastic with that cut without it starting to sound weird.

[Nick Sevilla]

I am really lousy at dialing in good vocals. I looked around here and I couldn't find some good threads. Can you kindly point me to some good stuff?
The pop stuff I listen to seems very trebley with the lows cut significantly. My vocals are probably battling with the heavier guitars.
What I am doing right now is doing a high pass at 125 Hz, run some light compression (2:1), and then 2-3 DBs of some high shelving around 4 kHz. Thanks!

Hi,

First, what you are doing to your vocal is completely wrong. Please remove anything you are doing before trying my suggestions.

There could be fundamental tones in the low frequencies down to 100 Hz which you might miss. And that shelving at 4kHz? Not good until you find out what your voice is doing there.

1.- What key are you singing the song in?

2.- What is your vocals' fundamental tone (the MAIN frequency where you are singing at)?

3.- Once you know 1 and 2, you can start to dial in different amounts of :

a.- Fundamental. If your vocal sounds small in relation to the mix, turn this up.
b.- 1st octave above fundamental. If your vocal is loud in the mix, but is dull or muddy, indistinct, turn this up instead of a.
c.- second octave above fundamental. Again, this will help the "definition" of your vocals in a mix.
d.- upper harmonics. Depending on your Fundamental tonic, you can find where your upper harmonics are, and boost those when your vocal is just too in the mix, and not popping up front.

3.- Sibilance. Once you have found your upper harmonics, you may or may not need to tame some sibilance. If you find that in low volume listening levels, the sss and plosives of the vocal stand out too much, you might need to de-ess the vocal. IF YOU DO please do this as the FIRST thing in the chain, so you don;t have to do as much of it. And either use a dedicated De-Esser plug in or hardware unit, or use a side chain able compressor which only sees frequencies above 10kHz to trigger it. This will sound more natural than forcing the compressor to duck with 5 kHz or lower.

4.- Now, once you have all this in place you have to look at the other instruments in the mix, and determine which ones are in the way of the vocal, and turn them down during the singing.

Cheers

[Theo_Karon]

For more aggressive rock vocals I'll sometimes do the 12k shelf thing, but I like to do it into something that will break up a bit, de-ess very aggressively using a contoured mult of the clean track as sidechain, and then mix that back in with the original. Portastudios are really good for this, not hitting the cassette tape at all but just cranking the input to get the channel to break up. Also, you might be surprised just how much compression you can get away with or even need on vocals in a dense rock mix... I often like to insert a more colored compressor on each channel to catch the faster stuff in a way that sounds pleasing and then use something pretty gentle and slow like an LA-2A or RNC in 'super nice' on the vocal subgroup for overall leveling.

[losthighway]

First, what you are doing to your vocal is completely wrong. Please remove anything you are doing before trying my suggestions.

That was tactless and smug, but at least it was followed by some decent advice.

[Nick Sevilla]

First, what you are doing to your vocal is completely wrong. Please remove anything you are doing before trying my suggestions.

That was tactless and smug, but at least it was followed by some decent advice.

I'm glad you like my style.

[vvv]

[Snarl 12/8]

Put the vocal up first. Solo. Get it sounding awesome on its own. Get it so it's hitting the meters how you want. (maybe -3db digital, +xdb analog) Then add other instruments one at a time. Don't let anything shit on the vocal. Someone on here once said, "the vocals are the franchise." I think its easy to lose sight of that in rock and roll. Especially when you're mixing your own voice, stuff you're really used to, or stuff with awesome guitar, drums and/or bass.

[christian_roth]

This is super helpful for a newbie. Thanks!

Here is what I am dealing with: http://whiteninjastudio.com/music/pear/ ... -27-12.mp3

I found the main frequencies that the guy is singing in and boosted those. I also did some slight cuts of the same frequencies on the guitars which are pretty dominant. I still feel like the vocals are a little dull though.

[losthighway]

Listening to those vocals did not make me think they were too dull. I thought they were pretty loud in the mix, too. I like how the background vocals sit: quiet and panned. I could imagine there being some more reverb happening on the lead part.

[Snarl 12/8]

Those vox are way too loud for this style of music and their quality. They need reverb, or doubling, or something else too. They sound like a whole different recording playing along-side the instruments. Take away some of that kick click and see if they can be intelligible at a lower volume.

[Brett Siler]

Agreed about the vocals being too loud. I think they sound decent, definitely workable. Starting with the raw vocal sound I would put a low pass filter up to around 125hz, and probably put a slight bell cut in the 200-400 hz range. There is a little bit of silibince going on in the 5khz-10hz range. I would de-esse that. Then if you want some more brightness put a highshelf from 10 or 11hz and boost it to taste.

I would also get rid of the fizz on the distorted guitars. I would bell cut in the 1kz-5khz range. That seems to be why you feel the vocals and guitar are fighting.

[MoreSpaceEcho]

yeah the vocals are too loud. turn 'em down a bit, if they're getting lost, compress them more. a little reverb/echo will help too. otherwise i thought that mix sounded fine.

[fossiltooth]

Yeah, the vocals should come down.

This kind of thing could stand to come down too:

First, what you are doing to your vocal is completely wrong. Please remove anything you are doing before trying my suggestions.

I think morespace is right. The vocals sound a little dry and exposed to my ears as well. The rest of the band sounds fine.

I also think the biggest issue that may be frustrating you in the mix is that it sounds like vocal is not in a great key for the singer. It seems like he's struggling a bit, especially on the high parts. (And also rhythmically -- Especially in the bridges.) There's no EQ setting that will make that resolve for you, and until you accept it for what it is, you'll probably keep trying things in vain. (I should know, I've been there dozens of times in the past.)

If it was me, I'd probably have him do a few more takes. (Honestly, a few more days worth of takes. It sounds like he's still getting comfortable with the song, to me.) And if all else fails, I'd recommend re-recording the entire song in a key that's easier for the singer.

It may sound drastic if you've never done that before, but honestly, it's a pretty normal thing to do -- Especially if you're making records on a commercial level. If you have to go that route, just call this version "pre-production" and do it even better next time.