14th Session - Posted on 2016-04-04 by Brian Powers

4-3-16

I recently found a part time job at a local studio recording and mixing vocals for hip-hop.  My lesson with John today was just that mixing four different vocals onto an already made instrument track.  First off the track was clipping and lacked dynamics.  We slapped on an EQ, found the frequencies where the snare and kick drum hit and then turned the overall output down to an acceptable level.  We then side chained the track to a compressor.   The first vocal was just introducing the rappers so we thought it would be fun to make him sound as if he was speaking through a megaphone.  To achieve this sound we added distortion, high pass and low pass filters, compression, and finally reverb and delay.  The second vocal or first rapper sounded very clean and just a little EQ tightened up his sound.  John and I then added two compressors, one subtle and one harsh, and then chorus to thicken it up and reverb to give it space.  John showed me a cool trick just to widen the reverb effect but keep the dry vocal in the center.  The second rapper needed much more EQ than the first.  After tweaking what we could we ran the vocal through the same compressor setup and then a de-esser and finally another EQ thinning out the mid-range to complement the first rapper.  The last vocal was a female rapper but pretty much handled that the same as the other two.  EQ, harsh compressor, a lot more De-esser, and more EQ to again it well with the other vocals.  Once this was done we put a limiter on the master and brought the volume up to professional levels.  This lesson was so much help and I cant thank John enough for taking the time to show me a few tricks to getting a great mix in this genre.