Lets talk about vocal mixing and production. You might find more inexperienced engineers just slap a pre-set on it and call it a day, but theres a couple of ways you can make your songs more creative with the use of effects and vocal production. Effects can be genre specific, but I’ve tried to cover a lot of different options to enhance creativity!
Getting a focused picture of the song
Getting a solid main vocal is usually the most important thing, but after that, you might have some ideas for double tracks or extra vocal parts you might want to overlay or overdub onto the song. It might be tempting to overlay and entire double track over the entire thing, but I usually don’t suggest that. Instead, overlap sections with doubled vocals, and be sure to have at least a few sections of just one voice to contrast with the doubled sections. Maybe just double every chorus or hook, or layer extra tracks of important, memorable, or rhyming, parts, peppering the whole song, and reinforcing the main vocal with additional parts to thicken it in sections.
Effects can be cool, but sometimes using too much of any one thing gets old. Think about different ways you can enhance sections with varying effects. Reverb and Delay can add depth, but usually I try to use EQ as an effect to make different parts stand out as well. Distortion and chorus can be interesting for backing parts, and placing the doubled parts in discreetly can be an interesting effect in itself. Most importantly, don’t lose the top line melody or main vocal. For most music that is intended for other people to listen to, people want to hear the words, so confusing the listener with a bunch of equally placed “doubles” might not be the best idea, so make sure the backing parts aren’t overpowering.
Most of all lets talk about what you want, and form a plan to make the best recording possible. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions or schedule and appointment to talk about your new project. Thanks.
