#Mixing vocals over instrumentals how to
#Mixing vocals over instrumentals full

We need to remember that the producer, when she created the backing track, did not necessarily care about adding vocals – the producer just wanted the best sound for the track.

#Mixing vocals over instrumentals full

When you import them into your DAW software, you can see in the waveform that they are coming in at full level, maxing out the meters. And you will get a really good sounding mix.Producers who create backing-tracks want them to sound as big as possible – most of the time they are fully mixed, mastered and level-maximized, and sound really full and “loud”. And then what you'll be able to do is be able to put any vocal with any instrumental using these two tactics together.

#Mixing vocals over instrumentals how to

There's a video following this that tells you exactly how to get gluey compression on your mix bus. The best way to get this to then really bond together so that you haven't got as much movement and it gets really gluey sound, is to get gluey compression on there. So after you've got this ducking and working so that the whole tracks together. So, uh, once you have gone extreme, then you can start reigning it in until you get that really good balance between the extreme and, and exactly how you're feeling it sits perfectly. You want to go extreme so that you can really work out your attack and release time. You want that release time quite quickly. And then you should hear how dramatically it is pulling the track down. Uh, put that on release and then put the attack on. So now we've seen that in its current form. Play around the settings until you get really tight. See the vocal is now smothered by the piano.

So that really does duck out of the way and let the vocal take the focus as it pops in and out. Now, listen out for the piano because the piano is the thing that's clashing with the vocal because that is in this frequency range. So let's just play that and you'll know exactly what it's doing. So every time this vocal kicks in, this is just ducking in that frequency range here. This is going to duck the main track, because this is on the main instrumental. Now we've got the range here so this is our little pocket if you like that, we're going to create.

So in the multi band, we have this now set up so is at 1.5k and we have this at about 5.5k. Now let me show you inside exactly how we do that with the multi-band compressor. So that little piece of vocal, we just want to create a pocket in the track and just duck that into its place. It's not going to be doing the top or the bottom just around where the vocal is so we can slot the vocal in. So all we're doing is effect, where this ducking, this section is only going to be ducking here. Now we're not doing it across the whole track, which would be, so if you think of a track, say this is the bottom frequency of 20Hz, the bass stuff.Īnd then you've got the top, which is 20k, which has all the hats and all that stuff. And we're just going to every time the vocals there, we're just going to duck it out of the way, very slightly so that we allow space for the vocal to take over the main focus point of the track. So what we're going to do is we've got the vocal along here and then we're going to take the track. But what we want to try and do is blend these together. So at the moment they're running parallel to each other.

Then we have the vocal, which is sitting like this going in and out. If you look at this, now let's go to a whiteboard and I'll explain exactly what we're going to be doing. So if you can look at this shape, then I can explain to you how this works. So these frequencies here around sort of 800 to about sort of 4k or 5k is where we want to be. But what we're trying to do is we're just wanting this to sit in the mix a little bit more. So if I just move that, then the vocals are normally found anywhere across the mix can be all the way down under 500, all the way up to about 800. So how are we going to set this up? Well, what we want to do is we want to get a multi band compressor, and we want to set this up so that it's around the vocal area. It sounds like two separate things, which it is. So you can hear the vocal sounds like it's not blended in with the mix properly. Now what we have, we have the vocal at the top and we have the instrumental down below. Today, I'm going to show you how to set your vocals perfectly in the mix.