Okay, so we have our vocals cleaned up, we've edited the timing pitch, trim down the fat and even flown them around from course, to course now it's time to head over to the mixer. And we're going to be blending all these tracks together into some really nice, fat rich verticals that will really elevate a song when you think about it in times gone by those Sony ways to kind of screw up the recording of the song you might have maybe trouble making a piano or getting the right drum sound, but nowadays, there are certainly perfect piano samples and drum loops. The main thing that separates the men from the boys is how well we arrange record and mix vocals. The other tools have become so commonplace it's kind of leveled the playing field, not so much with vocals. I really hear the difference between bad tracks, you know and great tracks quality And they come down to vocals and a lot of this has taken place in the section where we will be doing the mixing.

So let's get to it. Okay, before we get into a rough mix of our vocals here, what I've done is muted all of our vocals, just so you can kind of have a listen, I don't think I've played some of these backing tracks here. This is not going to be a master class on mixing, but I'll give you kind of a brief overview of how I came up with this background mix of our a sorry, a mix of that backing tracks and we'll start from the top. You'll note that the drum part is just a loop. It's like a home. It comes from inside the box.

It's a loop, so therefore I don't need to be doing EQ any compression. I have added a little bit of reverb here which is a room reverb listening to the decay of this loop as I take this reverb off. very dry write out a little bit of room to that metal warm that right up. I have also a shaky here and also a tambourine that brings in the occasional crash as well on this on this first one here, maybe a crash coming up now not maybe later on Okay, so this is basically the the drum back here I tend to go from drums, then over to bass and start building this up. Now that is I'll do a shout out to carbon. My, I believe is the sb 4000 beautiful bass that's plugs ready and no EQ nothing going on.

I do have some compression on that. If I go over to my rack here, and you can see this is the FET compressor here. And here's our gain reduction that just levels out some of those peaks at a four to one ratio. So we'll go back here and all the chordal parts come from a piano acoustic guitar also there's a pad here as well. So all the stuff that comes from within the box, in other words are these drum loops, the piano, this pad, none of that really needs any EQ or you know much processing at all. But in terms of say the acoustic guitar right here, I've done a little bit of EQ here, this won't be exhaustive on EQ, but typically I'm just adding a little bit of sheen there.

I've taken out a little bit of low mids around 200 hertz, that makes sense. Depending on the guitar, sometimes 200 hertz is exactly where you want the warm but in this particular guitar, it tend to be a little bit boxy in that area. And so I was able to take that out there. I don't have a high pass that that I missed that. I should put a high pass filter on here. Let me take everything else off.

So we're just dealing with their acoustic guitar here. Let's put a high pass filter on what that does is allows for high high frequencies to pass and lops off the low frequencies. So let's listen. I want you to pay attention to the low end of this guitar. And I'm gonna put it in yaks. Well it's definitely getting rid of the low end there, but it's too much.

So I suspect Yeah, this is 187. That shouldn't be that high. On an acoustic guitar. If you're playing a song that was focusing on the top four strings, maybe you're doing a song in D and some inversions of open D chord, then you could probably get away with this but this is in an open shooting where the low E string is really, really useful. So a high pass filter frequency of 187 is Gonna just kill that stuff. And in fact, we can see that here if we show the spectral EQ window.

So let's have a look here. So this is the useful stuff, right? That's my low E string. See when it goes down there. So that's all good. This stuff ain't so useful.

But if I employ this high pass filter where it's censored right now 197 all my good stuff, and you can hear it, listen to it. Yeah, it's just given it a radio quality. Now I'm on a high pass filter, it's just not in the right place. So I would take this and probably down, put it down about 80 hertz, like that. And I'll do the same thing on this one. And so let's have a look at that.

Right. So all the good stuff is there but all of this stuff here has been filtered out the right way of using a high pass filter. I'll be doing that in a bit later on as well. So you can hear everything's kind of joined together. There is a crunchy guitar crunchy, I think comes right about now. Just rough levels right now it's probably better right about there.

Pad here as well. Good. So we have a basic setup of our backing tracks. Let's move over to our vocals. So let's move on. Focus over here to the right hand side of the console, I have 12345678 of add vertical tracks, I'll unmute all of them.

And the first thing I'll deal with is the balance between my lead vocal and my double. So let's start from the top. In fact, before I do that, I might open up my sequencer here and place my markers at a place where they'll there'll be a lot of vocals to deal with. So I know this is the first first chorus right here, and I've placed the right marker here over to my bridge. Now you might get to drop markers in as well. I just find it there's just a couple places I tend to use these left and right markers.

That way when I've closed this all out, I can go bang straight to my left marker here and I know that it'll come up to that first chorus you We go Look into my eyes. Okay, so when these are mixed at you at UC, I mean mixed with it basically the same level here, you can almost get some flashing and comb filtering there. Your job is to start to bring this down until it doesn't sound like two voices, but just sounds like that lead vocal is being supported. So let's bring it up. And then let's In fact, let me mute all these backing tracks so that we can just concentrate on the lead. And the double Here we go.

Into my eyes dance, too loud. You think I've captured your heart God See, you just need a little bit of that double there I, you know, certainly taking it down, I would say at least 612 even more DB until you just you don't hear it but you just feel that support. Now these are rough mixes because as we start adding to compression, these levels were really changed. I don't spend a lot of time on this. I basically do it just to know what I'm dealing with. So let's bring these back and have a listen to them in context.

Look into my eyes. So that first one is remember these are double as well pan them out, wide left and right. You see You see, so this is probably you see that right? So listen to them. You see, is that right? Yeah.

Great and they panned out. And as you remember, I doused them with a fair bit of reverb. I'll play back that off later, but that'll be fine right now. And then so what was this one? I think I only did one on this very top. So again, that doesn't sound that great and let me play it back.

With this pronounced Look into my eyes and see, yeah, it doesn't get really high until a couple measures afterwards. And then No, you got na sounds horrible there, right? But if you bring it down pretty low, then it can has this just amazing effect of just placing a real sheen on your vocals where you don't even really hear it. That's a big part of when you're blending all of these tracks together. The sum is is so much more than the past. Can you hear that top in there?

Barely there, but that mix should work pretty well. Now remember, this won't be the final product, we just treat Trying to see what we're working with. And then kind of get familiar with all you know how all the parts just fit together. And next job is to use compression and EQ. Now while there's no rules that can't be broken in mixing, the general rule is this you generally compress before you EQ and the reasoning goes like this compression stabilizes the track it takes a wide dynamic range and drops it into a much more kind of compact manageable waveform. Compression also has the ability especially if you have a crashing type of setup with a fast attack.

It can rob you of your top end. So placing EQ after that allows you to make tonal changes if needed. If you EQ before compression, then quite often all the tonal tweaks that you make will be dramatically shifted once it goes through an aggressive compressor in that example. Also if you do a lot of EQ, before compression You'll change the threshold settings and find that the compressor is probably squeezing more in band specific ranges rather than just just the whole signal. Now you can you can play around with this as much as you want. But if you're looking for kind of the standard practices that have been passed down for generations, then compressed, then EQ so let's go ahead and start off with the lead vocal.

We've started by soloing this particular track, I have set up my left locator, the beginning of the verse, the first verse, and what I want to focus your attention to is the levels right here. As we play back at vertical see where the peaks are, see where the valleys are. Since the day your heart was open, and you were willing to believe that Gradle was leading your your heart and mind mine. So I mean there's it's not super Why'd but there's certainly parts there that would jump out, which would mean you would want to bring this down. So those parts don't jump up. But then the quieter parts will get lost in the mix.

Everything's intelligible while we've got an A solenoid. But if we answer that and listen, and it's going to compete with all these ones here, we need to narrow this dynamic range. And the way we do that is with a compressor. There's depending on what da W's in ProTools use inserts like logic in in reason we actually go to a racket, it's like we had a virtual rack. And here's our lead vocal right here. And then we just go shopping along here and find out what we would like to insert in this lead vocal.

Remember an insert is is placing it across the entire signal right here. It's just like plunking it right down in the middle of this, of this, of this channel, this mixer channel. So basically what you can do is you can grab any one of these questions He absolutely like this FET compressor. And we can just drag that right here. And now that's placed in the lead vocal. And when we're if we're to go back here to the beginning, you can see that this vocal is now going to be compressed and see right in you will really gain traction right here.

Now check that out with leading your, your heart to mine, not knowing anything about compression I actually do have a a masterclass in compression here, but this is the kind of nickel tour of that. What we've done is the initial settings here have a what is that looks like about a 10 to one ratio with a medium attack and release and there's no output gain or makeup gain there. So let me go over here to the some of the patches here and I'll select one of these compressors Light compresses. And you can see what that's done that's taken to a photo one is done a fairly fast attack. And it has boosted up the makeup gain. And let's see here how that has affected this vocal.

Since the day your heart was open, and you were willing to believe that greater love was leading your, your heart to mine, so you can hear how the initialized state before it was just crushing that now it's being a little bit more selective. With that there are basically two different types of compressors, some compressors will give you a threshold. Other compressors like this, the end will have a fixed threshold and the input here will drive you into that threshold. So the settings here I'm pretty happy with the attack here. If you want a little bit more intelligibility and preserve your transients right beginning of year, a fricatives. And also your, you know, just basically consonants in general those hard consonants, then you can slow down that attack.

And then that will let basically what if you have a very fast attack, it'll clamp down as soon as it hits that threshold. If you slow that down a little bit, then the very first transits will come in before they things start getting compressed. So typically, I will just slow that attack down a little bit. Let's have a listen to how this is done. And the piece we share is already there. So if you start compressing your vocal and start sounding quite dull, it's probably because your attack is a little bit too fast.

Bring that back and that'll allow that to breathe a little bit more inside of a so how does that know no one knows it might be tough to lay your heart round Cuz I know you've had your chair along the way. In now what you've noticed is that that rough mix of the backing vocals, they have gone down a whole lot, we need to compress them and stop bringing it up. But right now I'm pretty happy with with that vocal in terms of its inline compressor, there's another thing we can do and that is parallel compression. You might have heard of parallel compressing before you can do it using mixed buses, you can do it a number different ways, the quickest way I know of really thickening up your lead vocal is just to make a copy of it and compress the crap out of it and also accentuate certain frequencies in it as well.

So if we grab this lead vocal, this will be done, you know. I'll just be showing you how to do this in here. Obviously again, In your da w how you actually duplicate tracks, you just have to look at that. But right now I can just right click this and I can duplicate that channel and also the tracks there and this the lead vocal copy. Let me call this lead vocal crush. Okay, so now you can see down here in the rack, we have a duplicated track and effects came over here as well but instead of these mamby pamby kind of compression settings, we're gonna have massive compression here.

So let me slow that, go back to the beginning here. And let's just for start, max out the ratio, make the attack super fast. And then we'll just drive this input in until we're getting a massive amount of gain reduction here. So this is what it's gonna sound like. Since the day your heart was open, And you were willing to believe that Gradle was leading your, your heart and mind. And the peace we share is already there.

Inside of a sudden, have you noticed the levels right here, let me look at it again, we've just flatten this out. And the room tone has come up since the day your heart was open. So no matter what I sing, it just kind of lives right about here. And you notice the room time has come up as well, because that's what happens when you compress the heck out of a single signal. It will bring up the floor as well. And you are willing to believe the grade you know, the breaths also get really pronounced as well.

Now that is over the top right and another thing that I like to Do is also give it a boost of bottom end and a boost of top end as well. So this is really hitting all the remember the old loudness switches, you know the old not to remember that but quite often on steroids and high end casters that have a loudness control, which is basically an EQ curve that would boost the lows and the ties to get a higher perceived loudness. So, with the crashing here, the fast attack, a boosting of the bass and treble we're going to have kind of a cartoon version of this lead vocalist, listen, with leading your, your heart and mine. Okay, really crushed. Obviously wouldn't want to have it at that level. Here's the thing though.

Bring this all the way down. We take that solo off, and I'll start blending that in and listen to how We'll start supporting, we'll still have a little bit of transience over here because we have a slower attack and a much more, much less aggressive. I mean, look at the difference between that last attack, absolutely crushing it input has been driven into the threshold. And over here, just a four to one ratio with a slower attack. So we'll retain some of those dynamics over here the lead vocal, but bring in this crash and just listen to how the body of that vocal will just really start to get reinforced. Since the day you have resolved Pam, and you are willing to believe that great Allah was leading your, your heart to mine, we want to put a lot let me let me bring it up to parity with the lead vocal and it's it's over the top And the piece we share is already there.

It's too gloomy as well. So, little spot you don't need much, but boy listen to how that just adds so much body. And there's so much distortion going on with with this not distortion as in a distorted guitar, but that waveform is getting so distorted that it's throwing up a lot of overtones, a lot of new harmonics there as well. Let's listen again without it and I'll start blending it into where I think it sounds about right. Instead of no one knows it might be tough to lay your heart right on the line. Because I know you've had just chairs along the way.

But if you can, the day you got to trust someone Check it out. Let's move ahead. Let me go back a couple cuz I know you've had your share along the way of the day, you got to trust someone much more for so you can see, we've done a couple of things here. We've added an inline compressor with a slow attack and modest ratio and threshold and everything but then in parallel next to it, we have a completely crushed one that we can dial in until we get that added depth that we need. let's duplicate what we've done with the libo Cool. With this inline compressor, instead of just her reinventing the wheel quite often with a bunch of different background vocals, I'll just copy the effects.

So copy the settings from my compressor, and then just drop them down into these background vocals. Again, it's going to be different in your, whatever da w you have, but there's normally a way we can right click or you can command or or control click or something like that and be able to copy settings from one effect over to other tracks in within. Reason right here if I option, drag that down into backing vocal one, and that drops it in now all the settings are preserved. Then I could do the same thing with 2345 And six, and we'll go back to our mixer and have a listen to how that works out. In fact, let me back up, put the left marker here to the beginning of the first chorus. And now listen, I won't be able to hear how these sound.

Remember I set up their levels before that was before I can press. Let's see how it's sitting right now. Whoops, that's from the top. Let's go to the left marker here just before the first chorus. Look into my eyes. You see?

Okay, so these need to come up. Now. Let me bump them up a little bit more. Can we haven't done any chew yet? We're just dealing with dynamics and just the basic mixing To my eyes. See, like at the top in is to pronounce so bring that down.

I probably just need to split the middle what I did before that I'll go with you captured your heart then No, God. Cool so that is dealing with the inline compression here. I might do some parallel compression here in a little bit of a different way. Remember how we doubled or not doubled we duplicated the lead vocal into a lead vocal. Crash and the compress that was set in line with this, it was just maxed out at the max. That was because we had one track lead vocal track here.

And it was very easy to duplicate that across. There's another way that you could basically duplicate all of these and send it out to like a crash bass. And that is to use one of these effects sense right here. We know that effects sends will allow you to send up a portion of whatever channel you like to some place. So the first one here that doesn't have anything here I have a plate I have a room echo and delay right here. So the fifth one right along here, what I could do is set that up to a compressor.

So right click that create send effects. And we'll go across here and typically what I like to do is not choose the exact same compressor that I have on these. It's nice to vary Very some of these plugins that you're using compression, I don't have any empirical evidence to that, but I just find that if you start using the same plugin for every particular track, then you know can kind of sound a little bit too much the same. So what I'm going to do is grab, actually one of the mastering compressors right here, and I'll double click on that, and that has placed it in the rack and that is on effects send five now. So follow along if I activate all of those, but all the backing vocals and I not max that out that may put that at three o'clock. So now a portion of these backing vocals are going to be sent to a common compressor.

And if you like if you hit Edit there, then I can do so. Things that I did before remember I was cranking up the input here, I was setting a really high ratio setting a very fast attack. And so what I've set up is I've looped a section of the backing vocals and let's have a listen to how this is counting. You see? So you can see with the amount of gain reduction, I'm doing the same thing that I was doing on my on that duplicated track the lead vocal crash, but I'm doing it on a bus and I did it that way because I had many tracks that needs Go out here. And now I can with the the effects return level here.

I can blend in how much of that crashed bass. We want to hear on these verticals so let's unsolo them and have a listen. You see have captured your heart then no You see, it's much more subtle than we heard back over here. And we just duplicate that track because these are not as predominant in in the mix, of course. But if you listen to those background vocals, we can just add a little chunk to them by this parallel bus on a crushed parallel bus. And don't you think I've captured your heart and then No, God.

Now, I'll admit it's a subtlety. But these are the little you know, To kind of one percenters that really start making your vocal mix just a whole lot stronger. The next thing we'll use to clean up our tracks and then in this case to add backing vocals here is to use gates. Now you remember before I was I showed you how if we were to open up a sequence they're right here. You You saw down here that I was chopping little pieces out, but I didn't go after every little piece every little lipsmack in here in fact of some of those tracks let's listen in. You see you can hear there's a few little lips max in there but they're in relation their levels in relation to the you know, the real vocal is so vast it's so wide that we will be able to use a noise gate to only open up when it hits a certain threshold letting these chunks through and filter out some of these other ones here, in fact, write a bit and if you're recording yourself quite often you'll hear this listen to what happens when I finished singing here.

Did you hear all those key presses. So as soon as I finished, I'd lean over and hit spacebar, you know, on or mouse click, whatever. But if you have a whole bunch of them, you have recliner. Correct click all down there, but the level is so low, that with a properly set noise gate, we should be able to get rid of all this stuff. So what I've done is that the left and right markers so it will loop and I've set loop down here so it'll loop around and then now we're going to go over to our mixer now. I'm glad in this situation.

Mixer in reason you do have a noise gate set up here for each channel. So this makes it very easy easy. If using some other da W, you might need to Will you would need to insert noise gates across those particular channels, what I'm going to do is just solo, just the one track here and it's the tenor part here, which is a pat down, let's unpack that we lose Miss parrot right down the middle. And let's have a listen to this. And we're going to activate the gate. And there's a couple of controls here that very, very useful within a gate.

Some gates just completely mute the sound. Others have a range. So in this case, we have a range here. So therefore, when the gate is closed, it will duck down the level by say 10 Db or by 20 Db or by in this case 40 db, which is you know almost equivalent to just muting the sound. And you can see that the gate is closed with these LEDs right here. So the other thing is the threshold if I have that very high, this gate is not going to reclose you see.

So you can see every little tiny part of the signal opens that gate up. If we set it all the way down here, then I'd need to be at you know, basically shouting for to get past the gate. And anything less will close the gate you obviously want something in between. So typically I bring the gate threshold up really high and then start lowering that boom until only the loud parts the past you want to get through, do get through symbolism. You be is closed now. Since I finished singing, it was okay, so a couple of things are happening here.

The range i think is a little bit too much, we could back that back, so maybe the three o'clock setting here so it'll just pull it down about 30 db. I'll also bring the threshold up a bit so it's a little bit more forgiving. And if you notice, there's kind of some clicks the beginning so I might set this too fast. And then that will open up that gate very quickly, and hopefully this should all work. You see you be Okay, that's just like going in there. I mean, can you imagine if you had to make all those edits with a gate, you don't need to do all those edits that are the big edits, if there's a big, you know, throw clear sign that you would go in and you do those edits, but with a well set gate, this is gonna work out great.

So I'll just copy those, those settings. As I go across here, we'll turn it on. Adjust the range, keep the threshold about them, make it fast. So now, if I pan that back to where it was, and we saw all of these, let's hear how this is cleaned up. You see, see what these gates closed closing. You notice some of them are getting false triggers.

So I would bring this threshold up a little bit. That should take care of that. So all those mouse clicks, that all went around way right. And of course, you can do this with your lead vocal as well, I would pay a great deal of attention to how I set my noise gate on my lead vocal, because sometimes there are no breathy parts, things like that, but you don't want to get a get it out. So I would set the threshold maybe a little bit higher on the lead vocal than I would on these background vocals. Because the main thing I want to do because there's so many of these tracks, is to get them as clean as possible.