Performance Correction:
Vocal timing and pitch, arguably the most important part of any vocally prominent track - like Jimmys' tracks I've been mixing. Especially when you are working with doubles and backing vocals overplayed on the lead, this is where pitch correction can really add something substantial to your mix.
I used Melodyne on each of these tracks, and always on the vocals in select areas or the entire performance. I didn't use it because his vocals were bad or even incorrectly pitched, I used it because when layering vocals there is a world of difference between layering perfectly pitched vocals and layering vocals only 5 - 10% off pitch.
As you can see above, I've used this software to perfectly pitch each melodic part of the vocal. This can sometimes be an intensive process as you need to be careful to avoid pitching any breath sounds or plosives that may have been picked up by the software. You also need to be careful to go through the track as you're correcting it to ensure that it still sounds natural (if that's what you're after), as sometimes pitching vocals like this can create 'inhuman' sounding artefacts.
My goal was also to match up the lead with the double for every note, which is another intensive process because depending on how the vocalist has performed, Melodyne can 'correct' it to an incorrect pitch if you're not careful.
Lastly a very important part of pitch correction is to ensure that you know the key of the track you're working on. You can input that key into Melodyne and ensure that your vocals are a melodic friend of your guitar, synth or whatever you have playing alongside.
Check out the EP to hear how my layered vocals ended up sounding with this technique!
Repairing Audio:
After applying compression to some of the vocal tracks on 'Ay Yeah' I found that the recordings had a higher that usual noise floor, resulting in noise being audible after applying make-up gain. To solve this I used a plug-in by iZoTope called 'de-noise', this plug-in I have found the be exceptional at removing unwanted noise from recordings. I simply found a section of the recording that had no vocals and the noise was present, and click the 'learn' feature of the plug-in. This allows the software to analyse the selected section of audio and using a complex algorithm where phase reversal is used; almost completely remove the noise from that track (as long as the noise remains the same throughout the recording, otherwise you may need to use and automate several different instances of this plugin).
After applying two instances of this plug-in on the affected vocal tracks I completely removed the noise without compromising the vocals at all. Effectively saving the recording and allowing me to continue the mix, Hurray!
Mixing and Editing Techniques:
Delays: One of my favourite techniques I've used on a few tracks in this EP is my use of a ping pong delay on vocals.
20/40: Here I've used the 'Repeater' from Slate as a '20/40' delay. I've set it up so that vocals fed to this guy get enhanced with a very wide stereo effect. How does this work? Well instead of using the tempo of the track to dictate the delay timing, I've instead used 25ms for the left delay, and 40ms for the right delay, this delay is large enough to create stereo separation, yet small enough to not sound obviously like a double. Using this allows me to make certain vocal phrases pop more than others.
Effect Delay: On 'Family Over Everything' I again used the 'Repeater' as an obvious effect, timed to the tempo of the track to pop in here and there and provide a clear delay on specific choice words to fill in space with this ear candy effect. I've rolled off the lows and highs on this delay to give it a different flavour than the vocals that are fed into it, making it slightly less impactful than the vocals themselves.
De-esser on the stereo mix: I've used the Eiosis De-esser on my Sub Mix bus here, which is a bit unusual and a good way to ruin your mix if you're not careful. So be careful =P.
You can see it on a pre-set 'Vinyl Master Bright & Smooth' here, which is a very sensitive preset, yet it's what I want to put on my mix bus de-esser, as opposed to a simple vocal de-esser. I've reduced the sensitivity way down and even brought some of the dry mix back in here - so it's not doing much. In fact it's only effecting a handful of short moments throughout the track, so what's it doing? Above it's picking up a moment where the snare hits at the same time as there is a harsh sounding consonant in the vocals, reducing the harshness of that single moment so it's less harsh and smoother to our ears. Basically, I'm using the plug-in to smooth out any of the harsh moments of the track that only appear when everything is summed together, this is after individual de-essers have been applied to each vocal individually.
Loudness Standards:
I've asked a good friend Mike Allen to master these tracks, and as part of this request it was important for me to specify which platform that these songs will be released on. Why? Because of loudness standards. Each platform a song is released on can have different loudness standards, for example:
Spotify: -14dB LUFS
Youtube: -13dB LUFS
CD: -9dB LUFS
Apply Music: - A mysterious option of 'Soundcheck' that averages playback to a rough -14dB LUFS.
LUFS: Loudness Units Full Scale - this is a measurement over the entire length of the song that summarises the total 'loudness' of the track. CD masters are louder at -9dB LUFS, than Spotify is at -14dB LUFS. However what does that difference really mean?
Louder LUFS measurements actually come at a cost, the song may sound louder, however it's paid the price of a loss in dynamics.
It used to be that the louder your song was in comparison to the song that played next, the more people enjoyed it - Which is fair enough, but it kind of destroyed the essence of music for a while, as we now had a loudness war where mastering engineers tried to make their songs as loud as possible, and before we knew it most modern music looked like a sausage and contained no dynamics at all. This is where the introduction of loudness standards saved it all! music streaming services came up with the idea of normalisation, where each track played through their software undergoes a LUFS measurement and gets re-adjusted to a specific loudness as mentioned above. effectively allowing each song to be the exact same loudness as the next, bringing back dynamic range to modern music.
This introduces another challenge to the mastering engineer however - now in order to make our tracks sound as good as they can at each loudness standard, we need to create a slightly different master for each streaming service. This ensures that tracks have as much dynamic range as possible for the loudness standard offered.
Comparison to Industry Standards:
So I've mixed a Hip-Hop EP with Jimmy Yox. How does it sound? Let's say, compared to my reference tracks from Kevin Gates? Have I achieved a professional standard? What would help me to get a more polished track?
Positives:
Bass: Throughout each track, I've paid special effort to the bass level, the 808s and bass lines. I've managed to get a professional sounding low end by using frequency analysers to match the level of my tracks to professional releases, along with professional mixing techniques.
Clarity of Vocals: Comparing 'Family Over Everything' to industries 'Really Really' by Kevin Gates, I found that I really am proud of how I've mixed Jimmys' vocals. They sound clean, clear and compressed professionally. I've panned them tog et wider in the chorus which sounds just as impactful as it does in 'Really Really', and I've automated the ad-libs panning to create even more variance.
Balance: Each and every element of the track I'm most proud of 'Family Over Everything' and 'I'll Be Okay' are balanced absolutely to industry standard, low end, high end, vocals. Over a wide range of tracks I've compared them to I am left quite happy with the balance and technical mixing of especially these two tracks.
Negatives:
Vocal Clarity: I noticed looking back on the first track I mixed, 'All My Life', that my vocal mixing could be improved. Again making industry comparisons I'm noticing that the clarity and vocal level on this track could be improved with mostly EQ and simply volume automation.
Backing track: Again on 'All My Life' I've noticed that the backing track is not as present as it is in Kevin Gates 'Really Really' - This could be adjusted by bringing out the highs and cutting a little off the lows of my backing track, as well as using some reverb or stereo enhancer plug-ins to make it sit wider in the mix.
Ear Candy: This is something I'd love to have more time for to make changes on ALL of the tracks I've been working on. Every professional and successful track currently in the charts has a large amount of ear candy and variations happening throughout the track to keep you interested and listening for new things in the track.
While I've made some efforts to do the same in these tracks, I am realising that I haven't done enough. They could all be improved by tasteful use of additional effects on each element of the songs, sound design and creative removal of expected audio assets in sections - just to list a few of the potential changes that I could make.
Vocal Recordings: This is the only thing that I'd love to change about what I was given. I've found that I'd appreciate a few more vocal assets to work with, for example an extra double on each tracks lead, so I can choose where to use it, and mainly give me to option to use similar panning as Kevin Gates. He seems to love using a lead with two doubles, allowing for very wide panning on choruses. I have been lacking the second double in a lot of instances and I've had to use plug-ins and other methods to create space and impacts for the choruses.
Conslusion:
Overall I'm very happy with these tracks, and also aware of what I'd like to change. I'll be working more on these tracks before they are released onto a streaming platform later on in the year.
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