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"spread" you try to give them in stereo is much more about creating a nice "blocky"
sound than separating the harmony parts.
Copyright © 2004 Dreampoint Design and Engineering Ltd.
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How To Mix A Pop Song From Scratch
Normally, the levels of the backing vocals don't fit together. So compress them to death!
Yes - it's OK to do this on a pop track. Feel free to go quite mad. The backing vocals will
usually be at quite a low level in the mix and so the compression will either not be
noticeable, or will even enhance the sound! You want them to be a rock-steady block
with little or no dynamics. If they need dynamics it is (unlike other instruments) best to
compress them like mad individually so that they fit together properly, and add any
dynamics by hand using automated fader movements on the stereo backing vocals as a
whole.
If the backing vocals don't sound "thick" enough, or simply sound out-of-tune (a common
problem), then adding some chorus to them is often a good idea. If you have a "true
stereo" chorus try setting the chorus return (or the send) so that it is in reverse - i.e. Parts
on the left hand side, have a chorused sound to the right, and vice versa. This creates a
nice stereo sound for the backing vocals without getting too much separation on the
individual performers themselves. Check them in mono to make sure you haven't added
to much chorus (you normally don't want them to sound "effected" as such) and the other
reason is to check that you still get a nice "chordal" sound on the backing vocals when
the mix is played in mono.
To help thicken them up some more, either try using an "Exciter" effect such as the
Aphex Aural Exciter or try Dolby encoding, or simply add some very top end (12 kHz),
using a de-esser if necessary to remove any sibilance introduced.
Finally, consider compressing the stereo mix of backing vocals as a whole as well. Yet
more compression!! - Have I gone completely mad?? Not at all. Compressing the group
has a different effect than individual compression, and often both are needed to get that
"brick wall sound" that makes good pop backing vocals sound spectacular.
If you are using a PC based system, you might now have to "render" the backing vocal
mix in order to get some life back out of your CPU!
If the backing vocals are already "premixed" to stereo, you either have to hope that they
were combined using the techniques above, or instead, try adding EQ, reverse-stereo
chorus, EQ, Exciter, compression etc. to the stereo track as a whole and see if that helps.
When working with a "premixed" stereo set of backing vocals, you will often have to use
midrange EQ with a narrow bandwidth in the middle of the note ranges of the harmonies,
to "bring out" or "suppress" harmony parts that have not been correctly mixed together.
What? Did you expect a little thing like backing vocals to be easy? :-)
Copyright © 2004 Dreampoint Design and Engineering Ltd.
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How To Mix A Pop Song From Scratch
Step 9 - Refining the Main Mix Levels
Monitoring levels and mix "balancing"
At this point, you should have a relatively excellent mix - certainly much better than
you've ever heard the track before. However, it is likely that at certain points in the song,
the mix of the instruments goes slightly off-balance. It's worth sitting back for a bit of a
break now (more tea and biscuits anyone?) and listening back to the mix - perhaps on
smaller speakers and at a much lower volume. Personally if I'm having a little tea-break
like this, then I like to sit in a different part of the room (maybe the sofa at the back) and
listen at a very, very quiet level, and try almost not to listen. Maybe even listen outside
the control room with the door shut! (I'm not the only person who does this) - it gives you
yet another perspective - and we are each of us, after all - quite used to how records
sound coming from someone else's room with the door closed.
I then make notes either on paper or in my head as to what's going on.
Listening at low levels is always a real eye-opener (or should that be ear-opener?). For
some reason - although you can't hear the detail of the individual sounds particularly well
at low levels, you can certainly hear level imbalances with startling quality.
That doesn't mean that you shouldn't listen on the "big" speakers if the studio has them.
Main studio monitors are very expensive ($50,000 would not be an unusual price to pay
for a pair of main monitors), and part of the reason is the quality and attention to detail in
the sound that they reproduce, so main monitors are terrific for making sure you've really
brought the "detail" out of the sound, and sorted out conflicting sound sources -
especially in the low-mid to bass region. The bass end always sounds pretty much OK on
small speakers, so make sure you listen on main monitors to hear the mess that's really
going on underneath. It is particularly important if the record will be played in clubs and
bars.
If you don't have main monitors available to you, then the best you can do is listen
reasonably loudly in order to hear (and feel) the low end of the mix properly, and then
return the monitors to a more reasonable level as soon as possible afterwards. Listening
loudly for extended periods will quickly wear your ears out, as well as damaging you ears
in the long term.
In most studios, don't bother listening to a mix quietly on the main studio monitors. They
usually work very poorly at quiet levels, and they often don't come "alive" until you listen
at moderate to loud levels. They are calibrated at a medium to high level anyway, and
usually behave quite differently if under-driven. If you wish to listen quietly, then listen
on the near field (small) monitors instead.
Copyright © 2004 Dreampoint Design and Engineering Ltd.
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How To Mix A Pop Song From Scratch [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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