I'm currently recording vocals and mixing my new CD. I know that some people like to put down all of the vocals and then mix, but I like to record vocals for two or three songs, do some rough mixes, and then move on. To each his own.
I like to make mixing easy on myself so I don't have to do a whole lot of fader automation. One thing I like doing is to normalize all the audio tracks. Then I pull the faders down and readjust them. For vocal tracks, if there are big long silent parts, I'll cut those parts out of the track totally. EQ is the toughest part of mixing for me. It's not too hard to balance levels, I don't think, but EQ is difficult. You can't really EQ a track in isolation all that well, because it's part of the mix. With one exception - vocals. I like to solo vocals and sweep the EQ until I find a frequency range that sounds annoying to me. I'll boost it to make sure I've found just the right range, and then I'll cut it. Old trick.
Other tricks I use? I solo the drums and bass and make the bass roughly the same volume as the bass drum. I like to add some 100 hz to the drums for a little boost. I roll off a lot of low end on my acoustic guitar tracks because they muddy things up. I compress vocals when I record, at about a 4 to 1 ratio. Then on playback I compress them AGAIN, anywhere from 2 to 1 to maybe 4 to 1. And I put a limiter on them too. I use Melodyne Uno for pitch correction. I don't mind vocals that are ever so slightly out of tune, unless it's my voice... in which case it drives me absolutely insane. I'm anal about it.
For this CD, I will NOT be mastering it real hot. I'm going to master it like it's 1983. No "loudness war" for me. Maybe it won't stand up real good on the radio. I'm not expecting to be ON the radio too much. I also don't care what it sounds like in mono.
Well, there were some disjointed thoughts for you. I'm thinking that my CD should be done in about 3 or 4 weeks, at the rate I'm going. Maybe sooner.
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HEY BRO
ReplyDelete"One thing I like doing is to normalize all the audio tracks. Then I pull the faders down and readjust them."
This sounds counterproductive. Why normalize at all? Unless you're tracking waaaaay too cold, you're probably not gaining anything, and you could be introducing all sorts of subtle problems.
Plugins of a less-than-stellar quality have a tendency to crap themselves at the full-scale peaks in a normalized input track. Even the better plugins seem to react differently (read: sound worse) when the input is that much hotter.
You also have a chance of introducing inter-sample peaks on the track, though I think the summing buses of most DAWs would handle this gracefully.
I'm not particularly good at mixing, so take my words with a grain of salt. I just don't really see how normalization makes anything easier on you.
On another note, that sounds like some crazy compression on the vox. I don't think I've ever used more than a single 4:1 compressor on a line (except harmonies which can go up to 6:1). Your CD should be arriving soon (taking foreva to cross customs) and I'll be getting some new monitors, so I'm gonna see how this double-compression mess has been working for you.