RRFC Advanced Audio Engineering Week 12 Mentor: Larry Goetz Studio: The Lair - Posted on 2016-06-30 by Justin Smith

    Today was a great lesson about mixing vocals and after I got to run a piano session for two hours. I asked Larry to give me a lesson on the tricks and secret mix techniques of top pop mixing engineers. I learned a bunch today. He started off by having me listen to vocal stems on the internet. Then after we listened to a few, he pulled up a session with a dry vocal. He told me that the vocals are not as wet as I would think. The trick he said is a lot of little things that make a vocal track pop out in the mix.  He first added a doubler via AUX and slightly de-tuned it. He then added some modulation to add some movement to the vocal track. He then created three AUX tracks and put a delay on each one. One with 1/4, 1/8, and 1/16. He mixed that in and it sounded really good. at the end he added just a little plate reverb on the vocal. After the lesson I ran a piano session. I set the piano up with 2 vintage U87 mics. I patched it in through the Neve 1272 pre amp to a stereo track into the clients pro tools session. I also patched in some eq with the API hardware Larry has. Overall the session was smooth and the client left happy. I am really getting the hang of the studio and feel I am really progressing in my knowledge. 

-Justin Smith