Mixing Vocals 101: How to Mix Vocals Perfectly
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Referencing songs for better vocal mixing
When mixing vocals, referencing songs is an invaluable technique. By comparing your mix to a professionally mixed and mastered track, you ensure that your vocals sit properly in the mix, both in terms of frequency balance and volume. It’s like having a roadmap to guide your mix decisions, ensuring that your vocals shine and stand out, just as they do in your favorite tracks.
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Things to Compare with Your Reference Track:
- Arrangement of Your Reference Song
- Types of instruments used.
- Structure of the reference song. Are there genre-specific properties you need to incorporate?
- Sound of Each Instrument
- Vocals: Consider the effects and techniques used to create specific vocal effects. Are the vocals heavily compressed or lightly? Are effects like chorus, bright reverb, or room ambiance applied? Which frequency is dominant?
- Drums: Is the kick sharp and punchy as in modern productions, or softer and more recessed like The Beatles? How does the snare sound? Is it robust with a resonant tone, or is it thin with a pronounced attack, as often found in heavy metal productions?
- Examine every instrument, describe its sound, and consider which effects the mixing engineer might have used to achieve the desired sound in your reference track.
- Positioning of Instruments
- Determine where each instrument is placed in the mix. This involves understanding the stereo placement and depth, which can provide a sense of space and dimension to the track.
Use plugins
Certain plugins enable loading reference tracks, simplifying A/B testing.
For insights on A/B plugins, check out this blog.
Record your referenz from Spotify
Step 1. install SoundFlower
Step 2. Create a new output -device
Step 3. The sample rate
Step 4. The output device
Select SoundFlower as the output device. Additionally, I suggest selecting another device, such as your audio interface or integrated sound card. This allows you to hear the audio you’re capturing, especially when recording from sources like YouTube or Spotify.
Step 5. Give it a name
Remember to name it! This is crucial if you’re using multiple custom-designed output devices.
Step 6. New output in the preferences
You’ve successfully set up your custom multiple output device. To capture any audio on your Mac, head to your preferences, select ‘audio’, and choose the newly created multiple output device as your output option.
Step 7. DAW audio setup
Within your audio recording application, head to the audio setup. Select SoundFlower as the input device and for the output, choose your listening device (e.g., headphones, integrated speakers, external interface).
Step 8. Create a new stereo track
Create a new stereo audio track, selecting channels 1 and 2 as the input.
Step 9. Start recording
You’re now set to record your Mac’s output signal, be it from YouTube or any app with audio output. Press ‘record’ in your DAW or recording tool and play the application you aim to record from. Since we’ve selected more than just SoundFlower as the output, you can hear the app’s audio even if the DAW is closed and no signal is passing through.
And now ?
You can now capture audio output from any device. This is useful for recording your editing sessions in the DAW or importing reference tracks directly without downloading from the internet.