How to mix a song in your home studio

Vijay Krishna (moving out..) posted

A good microhpne always come on handy for a pro sound quality.You dont need a hign end microphone like Neauman,however i would strongly suggest to buy a good microphone something like Rode NT 1 is my fav in budget.

Once you record your song in any of the software…lets say Fl Studo, Adobe audition,Logic pro, Pro tools you can see your tracks sitting there in you fav DAW software.

From here if you are a composer you will probable work on adding some more track for arrangement like beats,pads,string,guitar,bells etc etc.
If you are a singer you would probably want to mix this trck with your karaoke track.

In either of these two options you have to mix and master your track and to make vocal sit in your track is the biggest chalenge.

For that first thing fist lets do a vocal comping.
Vocal Comping is a way to fit your best singing part one by one. Fo example if you are a singer.You can sing multiple time on multiple tracks and once that is done you select the best part from each of the track and make a master track out of it.If then you feel a need to singing again for some portion you might wand to do a retake for that part.

Once you make a master track you can normalize your trakc to make sure all the levels in your vocal are same.There will be some parts where you might have sing on a higher volume, for those parts you can take help of volume automation and reduce the volume for those parts to bring overall volume of the track at constant level.

Doing volume automation will not solve all your problem, you would alos have to compress the vocals as some parts with having high frequencies will eat you overall volume level.

For doing a compression you can use some free vst ,however here are some of my fav
1.Waves SSL
2.UAD compressor
3.Waves multiband compressor

Next step is to add reverb/delay ( I would leave adding EQ to you as unless and until you know wht you are supposed to do with EQing plugin and there is a need for that you should not need that.Having said that if you really wana play around with EQing your vocal this is the phase you should do.I prefer doing EQ after compressor.Some ppl like to do EQ first and then compress.

After that you can add a lil reverb and/or delay. Nowdays if you listen soome songs you would notice that reverb is being used very subtly and the vocal is very on the face.So be careful of adding reverb and add very lil. Make sure your vocal sound not too far behind the stange.

Some of my fav reverb/delay plugin
1. Soundtoys : This delay plgin is my all time fav.Even the presents sound some of the good vintage analog delay plugins.
2.Sony oxford : Reverb sound very cool
3. East West space : This is probably the most beautiful convolution reverb you would ever come acorss.They sound so beautiful that you would end up having these reverb in each channel.
4. Altiverb : Same as East West Space.High end convolution reverb.Its a bit costly if you are on budget.

Once you have added your reverb and delay take a pause and listen to the track.try to figure out what is missing.
Is the panning of instruments not write ?
Is the instruments sounds muddy (fighting some same frequencis).

If you K- track is of good quality then you can add some spece enhancer plugint to given some room to different instruments.Incase of arranging track you would probably want to pan all the different instruments so that no two instruments share the same space.

Remember you ear can only judge three instruments at one time.So make sure not to many instruments on the same scale,on the same ear at the same time plays.

Once things are done I would suggest to add a Limiter to restrict some of the high end frequencies and to give some headroom for your overall song.

So lets recap on the overall workflow:

Vocal track → Vocal comping → volume automation → Compressor → EQing (if needed) →reverb/delay (or both) →panning (if required)→ Limiter

So here we are…let me know if this helps.

Have a great day.Next session we will talk about some of the tips and trick to make vocal sound more realistic.

Posted on November 04, 2011