Cockos Incorporated Forums - View Single Post - "the money and the greed"

mschuster · 01-10-2018, 03:15 PM

Great song Sam! and GREAT MIX!!

You've got all the right ingredients; song writing, lyrics, good vibe, slammin' mix.. etc.. i think you just need to focus on the vocals a little more.

Are you using a condenser mic? The reason i ask is because your vocals sound a little muted - don't have that sparkly high end. a 57 will produce that - as well as a few others. Generally a condenser will give you a more polished sound with nice highs (and lows in some cases). If you don't have a condenser, I highly encourage you to get one - it'll make a YUGE

difference for your type of music. Mainstream pop has in-your-face vocals for everything today. Usually translates to some nice high end (3k?, 5k?, 8k?, etc) to cut through - with a lot of mud pulled out. I ALWAYS do a pretty wide pull down starting around ~300hz and easing it up to 1k on my vocals. Really cleans them up. Sounds drastic, but give it a try. It allows the vox to peak through on the mix. Usually a 3k/5k boost does wonders too! And then there's COMPRESSION. It is your friend for vocals of this genre. You really want to tame peaks and pull up that volume so everything is sitting up on top of the mix and out front. I use REACOMP (w/ makeup) in combination with a BX OPTO plug to really level out the vocals and bring them up - as well as some parallel compression. You can't have a modern vocal sound without doing some of this. Don't be scared to give this a go and be aggressive. Do what sounds right to your ears. Maybe you do it already - if so - push it a little more in conjunction with the EQ notes above and I think you'll be happy with what you hear.

One other note.. If you had background vocals going on the chorus, it was hard to hear. You really want the chorus to POP OUT at the listener and bringing in some big lush backgrounds is a perfect way to do it. This falls into arrangement - and I highly recommend giving it some thought on your next tune. Do some octaves of the lead, harmonies, etc.. and pan them all hard left and right. Duplicate them, one hard left, one hard right. Really makes a difference!!

Sorry, didn't mean to get overly preachy/wordy.. I can just hear how close you are to something really fantastic and amazingly good - and I know how much you care about this stuff - so wanted to provide a few things I've had luck with.

01-10-2018, 03:15 PM	#3
mschuster Human being with feelings Join Date: Jul 2007 Posts: 1,259	Great song Sam! and GREAT MIX!! You've got all the right ingredients; song writing, lyrics, good vibe, slammin' mix.. etc.. i think you just need to focus on the vocals a little more. Are you using a condenser mic? The reason i ask is because your vocals sound a little muted - don't have that sparkly high end. a 57 will produce that - as well as a few others. Generally a condenser will give you a more polished sound with nice highs (and lows in some cases). If you don't have a condenser, I highly encourage you to get one - it'll make a YUGE difference for your type of music. Mainstream pop has in-your-face vocals for everything today. Usually translates to some nice high end (3k?, 5k?, 8k?, etc) to cut through - with a lot of mud pulled out. I ALWAYS do a pretty wide pull down starting around ~300hz and easing it up to 1k on my vocals. Really cleans them up. Sounds drastic, but give it a try. It allows the vox to peak through on the mix. Usually a 3k/5k boost does wonders too! And then there's COMPRESSION. It is your friend for vocals of this genre. You really want to tame peaks and pull up that volume so everything is sitting up on top of the mix and out front. I use REACOMP (w/ makeup) in combination with a BX OPTO plug to really level out the vocals and bring them up - as well as some parallel compression. You can't have a modern vocal sound without doing some of this. Don't be scared to give this a go and be aggressive. Do what sounds right to your ears. Maybe you do it already - if so - push it a little more in conjunction with the EQ notes above and I think you'll be happy with what you hear. One other note.. If you had background vocals going on the chorus, it was hard to hear. You really want the chorus to POP OUT at the listener and bringing in some big lush backgrounds is a perfect way to do it. This falls into arrangement - and I highly recommend giving it some thought on your next tune. Do some octaves of the lead, harmonies, etc.. and pan them all hard left and right. Duplicate them, one hard left, one hard right. Really makes a difference!! Sorry, didn't mean to get overly preachy/wordy.. I can just hear how close you are to something really fantastic and amazingly good - and I know how much you care about this stuff - so wanted to provide a few things I've had luck with.