![]() Julian Kindred addressed this in some depth: "In many styles of dance, reggae or electronic music there's a pretty good argument that the bass is at least as important, if not more so, than any vocal content. If you have to work at it too hard, it could be that it's just not quite right in some aspect of the vocal source."Īnother recurring theme was how far the client wants the mix engineer to stick with what's expected in a genre (the answers to most of my questions could easily have begun with "it depends on the song and the genre"!), and what the role of the vocal is in the song. You feel uneasy because that doesn't ring true. That sets up an incongruity, whereby the brain knows that such a timbre shouldn't be able to dominate the stronger sounds in the arrangement, yet somehow it does. Jack Ruston said that: "If the track is massive but the delivery is undercooked, or the voice too soft in timbre, you wind up in this position where you need to make it too loud in order to cut through. But there are several scenarios in which it could prove difficult to get a vocal to sit nicely, no matter what tricks and tools you have at your disposal, and some engineers felt it important to address this. First, I asked the engineers to assume that the performance, recording and arrangement were of a good enough standard to mix. I'll highlight a few things before we get into the nitty gritty. But we also found lots to discuss about vocals specifically. ![]() Inevitably, our discussion strayed into more general mixing topics - monitoring and listening levels, for example - and I make no apology for including that here, as it's all very relevant. Five of them, to be precise (see 'About The Engineers' box), and, as I'd hoped, their answers revealed both commonality in their approaches and some very different ways of working. Having recently given a lot of thought to this most crucial aspect of mixing I was curious to know what other engineers thought about it - so I decided to ask them. We asked a number of engineers how they do it.Īny experienced mix engineer knows that a good musical arrangement should leave a 'natural' spot for the lead vocal, where it will be supported at the right moments by other instruments, but getting a vocal to sit perfectly all the way through a mix can require some 'heavy lifting'. ![]() ![]() Getting vocals to 'sit right' can require a lot more than setting the fader and applying EQ. ![]()
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