VOCAL PRODUCER CHECKLIST: How Do I Get Smooth Vocals?

Release Your Music Independently

Amazon code: mixbustv01-20

In this video

Comment, Like and Subscribe!

[AndyCampbellMusic]

Who disliked this video? This guy gives some of the best advice on YouTube?

[kamilpaszko]

Such a great material! I can listen for hours. I had same feelings with Dan Worrall tutorials. Perfect speech and explonation David.🙏

[reggiedillard]

I LOVE THIS GUY. I LOVE HIS PASSION FOR THE CRAFT AND HIS LOGIC TO RECORDING. KEEP SHINING BROTHER! ✊🏾🍻✈️.

[dmind]

"Sometimes a vocal needs one plugin, sometimes it needs 15"... So true. I learned to stop making rules and relying on canned plugin chains. I listen to each part in the context of the song and apply fundamentals. I do have chains that solve certain common problems, but I find that more often I'm making deliberate choices and have better results that way. And always the Lord-Alge rule "Only as much as you absolutely need".

[Nathankaye]

Wow! So many nuggets in this video & I’ve been recording and mixing for decades. Amazing! Thank you

[timbranniganmusic]

Thanks for another great video! You always give my brain a reset when I’m in the weeds, mixing. Just a change of attention for a few minutes always helps, but especially when it’s focused on mixing. You really offer some of the best information available online and your delivery is always genuine and humble. You rock, my friend. Thanks again!
Best wishes - Tim

[JackDenning]

THE LOWPASS JUST SOLVED MY ISSUE THANK YOU

[amusik]

Solid gold. You get do used to thinking that there needs to be a plug-in for everything that I never thought of simply automating the levels.

[amirgrant]

More often than not, I separate frequencies into two separate groups. The ones you can hear and the ones you more so feel rather than hear. Certain things are more of a feel rather than something that is heard. Like a smooth guitar for instance. What do you notice when you play a good acoustic guitar in a well treated room? You notice gentle highs and air and the rich lows that put a sweet vibration and resonate in your chest. Caused by both the material the guitar is made from and the material the room is made from. Which is something that is more felt than heard.

Vocals are the same in a sense and if you take away the "feel" of the vocal, it becomes either dull or harsh just like a cheap $100 acoustic guitar. Understanding that concept gives you the ability to turn something that sounds cheap and has no feel into something that sounds expensive inside a mix because you can use mixing tools and plugins to add to the cheap element what is missing and usually, you dont even need to add that much. Even with reverbs, that is often the difference between a cheap sounding reverb and a more expensive sounding one. The "feel". Not the "color".

[DavidDiMuzio]

So much great info here. Wish I had heard all of this sooner. Definitely inspired me to want to work on vocal performance in regards to consonants and esses a lot more.

[ozzyml]

6:18 "Fade the riding" lol! Awesome info as usual, thanks David. I'll remember to fade the rider ;)

[Joelfrancis]

OMG These are just secret tools that almost nobody tells you about.
thank you so much!
I will definitely implement this in my workflow moving forward. And I will save this video because I might need to come back to it again. Keep up the great work bro 👏👏👏👏

[precisionsoundworksstudio]

Fantastic video... Thank you for posting this!

[bjoernkmusic]

02:10 Just mixed a vocal track that we recorded using a 40 € SM58 imitation from a company called Jinao. We used this microphone after blind testing everything we had available in the context of a rough mix (guitar tones were already in place, which is probably the element that the vocals compete with the most).

Mixdown: compression using a software distressor, filtering <150 and >16k, 1-2 dB of deessing using a dynamic EQ at 10k. No further EQ. It's not about what is best, but what is right for the track and the vocalists voice.

[NiOOfficialDOPE]

yep the highpass did it! what an easy thing....sending much love. great content as all i saw from you! thanks a lot.

[philipsumesgutner]

Wow, this is very good information. It started with a simple question and you were still able to focus. So much value in this chat. Thanks!

[DarkRattlehead]

Great content as always, and I completely agree regarding your last point: the performance has to be good!
We have so many efficient tools that a more artists rely on them (and us) to sound good, because of laziness, lack of experience, or some other things. I've had guys not understanding why I made them redo some takes because they thought they would be good enough after I fix them... and I'm not talking about mouth noises like on Bella's recording.
Some dudes think we can fix everything and change things from blue to red, and while that's true to a certain extent, they don't realize that for us to do an A+ mix, A performances and arrangements are needed.

"It's all in the pre-production" said some random guy named Rick Rubin

[irecki]

Mixbus Rock Again! Great point Dave, fixing vocal track "by hand", make vox much much cleaner, smoother, than "playing-fighting" with plugins. Most singers pomp so much air with S, Sh, K, T, P, B, K etc

[streetlogic]

Never thought about a low pass always done some high pass. This was interesting good job on the video good info.

[charliekey]

Thank you, awesome information! I was needing this check list as a starting point. I appreciated.