Matthew Weiss is the head engineer for Studio E, located in Philadelphia. This takes a while to get a feel for, and is somewhat subject, but it’s highly effective.
This will expose the quality of the reverbs used in the instrumental.įinding a similar reverb/delay, and EQ’ing the reverb to match the tonality of ambience in the instrumental will help bond the vocal and instrumental in the most transparent way. If you have a mid-side processor, solo the side signal, or turn the center signal way down. Obviously don’t do it if it’s too detrimental, but it’s something to consider. If the track has a distorted or saturated quality to it, you may want to purposefully distort the vocals. This goes for the rest of the frequency spectrum, and overall tonal qualities like distortion. A bright vocal on a dark track will sound a little unglued. You may want to lean your vocal EQ to compliment this. The instrumental may be very bright or very dark. If you are careful in your approach you can get the vocals pretty darn compressed without them sounding “bad.” But it’s a negotiation. This takes a lot of tact, and often requires a number of compressors working in tandem in order to reduce the negative artifacts of over compressing a voice. You can minimize this effect by compressing the vocal until it starts to compete with the density of the instrumental. Neither of these are great, but if I were to err, I’d lean toward the side of the vocal being over the mix. The result here is that the vocal will always either sound like it is buried by the instrumental, or so loud that it feels like it’s hanging over the mix. The idea is to make the vocal sound like it belongs with the instrumental.įor example, the instrumental may be highly compressed, and your vocal may be very dynamic. Once the vocal is in a good place on it’s own, there comes the game of “matching” it to the instrumental. It’s impossible not to make compromises when you are EQ’ing the entire instrumental. If there’s anything that really steps on the vocals, notch it out a hair. Pulling the center down but keeping the sides up a bit can help in creating a sense of dynamics, and a “pocket” for the vocal to live in. M-S processing can allow you to separate the sound that lives in the center from the sound that lives on the sides. If you can’t make it, fake it.Īnother place you can get a little dynamic is in the “side” information. Often times, I’ll find drums that match or compliment the drums in the record. In this case, you may need to get inventive. Sometimes an instrumental is so compressed, there’s no transient at all for an expander/transient designer to grab. If the record is clipped, you may need to use something like iZotope RX to get your peaks back. It can take a while to get used to using an expander-3 to 6 dB of dynamic range adjustment is usually a good start. Turn the instrumental down, and use an expander or transient designer to rebuild the peaks of the drums. If the instrumental is too dense, that’s really more of a dynamics issue. EQ is the method most people seem to recommend, but EQ is used to correct tonality issues. To open up the instrumental, try to do as little EQ as possible.