4 Steps I Take To Mix Great Live Vocals Everytime

Get better mixes, faster with my 3-step guide to perfect EQ:

The most important element of any mix is vocal, sure there are some exceptions but 99% of the time your job is to make the vocal sound nice.

Sometimes that’s a big ask, a tall order so to speak, you might have a difficult vocal or you might not even know where to start. You might be improving the vocal at one stage but making it worse at another.

If you’re struggling with mixing vocals, or even if you think you’re not, I have 4 tips for you to get great-sounding vocals every time.

In this video you’ll learn:
The 4 things you have to balance for great vocals
Why each of them is important
What you might be doing that’s ruining your vocal mix

00:00 Introduction
00:41 Free EQ giveaway
01:16 Step 1 - How to EQ vocals
03:32 Step 2 - How to compress vocals
05:10 Step 3 - Best Reverb settings for vocals
07:39 Step 4 to great vocals
08:23 Summary

[stephancarroll]

THX for posting, weekend warriors need all the help they can get for live sound management

[scottthomas]

Nice summary for a basic vocal. I like to eq my send to the reverb instead of the return. I find this to be cleaner. In addition to the filters I also like a small dip with a medium to narrow Q around 1k. This helps the presence of the vocal.

[pvanb]

Great stuff Andrew! Depending on how powerfull the singer is, I'm often using input gain up to 26db and maybe 28 if there's only one vocal mic and the singer is really quiet. Obviously you need to have the monitor wedge eq'd so feedback freqs are notched. And definitely eq the incoming effects signal, either on the effects virtual device if it has one, or on the return channel.

[LewisMcDonaldBass]

YOU are the best compression! That is a great point!

[Cloud-band]

Definitely the most actionable and practical advice on live vocals! Thank you

[toomasleppik]

I feed two channels from main vocal input - First one has normal eq and no compression, this is the one I also send to monitors. The second one has more cut through eq, abundant compression (with make up gain) and some saturation. During live I balance these two according to situation. I like to ride FX very low but not mute between songs - if theres a certain atmosphere being created within the set, maybe even with little storytelling then total mute fx kind of kills the vibe, it of course depends of the scenario.

[georgangelides]

Thats the first perfect explanation I heard on YT _ thats the truth

[tomasobrien]

Great info all round there, covered a ton of bases.

I find I get great results from compressing slightly more aggressively than reasonable for the situation, but doing so with parallel compression. Mixing Station & XR18 compression has a "Mix" knob between compressed and unaffected and it really helps decide how much of a compressed foundation I want to bring out while keeping the dynamics from sounding artificial and squashed.

I do find myself using a touch of make up gain quite often too, and I've yet to run into issue with that. Usually if I'm really trying to squeeze out the nuances of a quiet performance over a less than respectful crowd, lol.

[Hey_you_guys]

One thing I've learned is that if you still can't get a lot of the mud out of the vocals it might be bouncing back from the monitors so get the monitors sounding nice and that can help the front of house mix.

Also I really love using a multi band compressor on vocals.

[VladicD]

I use AUTO compression on X32, M32, XAir mixers and it works perfect on vocals for me.

[themaisi]

Hey, great channel 👌🏼 watched like a ton of videos today and as Ive experience in the industry for almost 13 years now I still learned something today 😊

So I’m doing my live vocals over multistage compression if possible. Of course general EQing or dyn EQ and then into multiple stages of compression using a very fast attack and release time to tame very high peaks. I’m using a hard knee here. So it’s basically a sort of limiter bit but not with a very high ratio. I’m using 2/3:1.
After that I’m hitting my „fattening“ compressor with a slow attack (45ms) and a middle to fast release (around) 65ms. This compressor is doing most of the work with around 4-6 dB of reduction. And if I somehow have a built in plugin available or even an outboard hardware in my 500 series I’m going even one step further and compressing it either way an opto or I’m using a HF limiter, or and multiband depending on the style of music.
This is my chain that I’ve perfected over the years and it is killer and super versatile. Not possible with every desk of course but doing a few steps in multiple stages is key in my opinion.

Cheers ✌🏼

[TechnoAlex]

I like to compress my vocals with no makeup up gain to catch the peaks on the individual channel, and that then goes to a group where it's a more smooth compression with a soft knee and around 2-3 maybe 4db of gain reduction then makeup gain depending on the genre, and a slower attack and release time to thicken the vocal out and make sure it is always audible in the mix, usually with onboard compression or an LA-2A clone (think dlive with d pack). I like this because most digital desks allow a PEQ/GEQ on the group so I can kill the feedback that the makeup gain may (or may not) bring out.

Great video!

[robin_miller_music]

Interesting about not using make-up gain on a compressor. Totally agree about high and low pass filter on FX returns, and also riding the faders and cutting on talking!

[othonmusicTV]

excellent video and super helpful, thank you!

[ferrier]

Personally, I like to have very little compression and use more mic control. But great piece of advice

[MrEskimo]

Great video! I do agree that you should be very conscious of muting delays between songs, however reverb can just be turned down, as I’ve become more experienced I find it sounds weird when the vocal goes totally dry. Turn the verb down a amount but just enough left that talking still has a little bit. Maybe it’s just me and a subtle touch but one that I find to be nice.

[aaronvarughese]

Can you explain why you don't put make up gain in live situation? Don't you need to bring up the percieved volume of the low parts to compensate?

[paddyeire]

Make up gain is feedback material, absolutely bang on!! It'll ruin your night, trust me! Love your vids mate, keep em comin!

[travishanson]

I racked my brain for a week trying to figure out how to better utilize what i have. For signal processing.

All analog except the driverack PA.

So i like my mackie profx12 v3. Lots of control on levels, the 3 band channel eq is nice and smooth. But the fx section kind of sucks. No adjustable parameters, and just sounds too wet and even when the vocal is sounding good its still quite weak.

So i had 2 gigs on the same night last month, so ordered a cheap behringer 4u 12 channel unit and then a buddy gave me an old vocopro mic mixer (it does have adjustable parameters in the fx section plus a 7 band eq on the main output and sweepable mid on the mic section)

I have a dbx 2231 eq, and 266 stereo compressor, but have 4 mics i want to apply the eq and compression to.

So for comp and eq i used the sub output and route channels 1 thru 4 (mics with onyx preamps) to go to the compressor, then eq then back to the mixer on channel 5/6 using the stereo line input so i can isolate left and right if i need to. Using the aux/monitor send i send a signal to the behringer, to take advantage of its fx section and the dirt of its preamps. Using the fx send i send a signal to the vocopro to take advantage of its delay parameters then route that to another channel on the behringer, then the mains of the behringer go to channels 7/8 and 9/10 of the mackie to be put into the main mix. Panning each group oposite each other.

This is a karaoke setup. I will eventually buy a midas mr16/18 or behringer xr16/18 to do the same, but i now have somewhat dynamic control over my fx, i can compress all mics precisely and i have the added benefits of live vocal layering using things i already had.

If it flops (worked well at home at high levels) tonight i just route to the main mix and bypass the sub group and im back to square one lol.

[excelonstage]

Please how can i achieve the Benjamin Dube kind of BGV's mix. I got a new job as a mixing engineer and my BGVs mix is too in the face. I wanna achieve a soft and airy kinda vox mix.
Can you make a video on this?😊