Mixing and mastering tracks for Jimmy Yox!
When it comes to mixing any artist, first you've got to make sure you're in the same headspace as the artist, moving in the same direction. How do you do that?, with references! For my upcoming project mixing Jimmy Yox I've been given Kevin Gates as a reference, so I'm about to kick into some study on Kevin Gates and how he gives his tracks their unique sound. Now I'm not trying to replicate the sound Kevin Gates, simply provide myself with ideas and make sure that my mixing ends up sounding like a professional pumping hip-hop track!
Artist:
Kevin Gates is a Hip-hop/gangster rap artist from the US, who's been in the music industry since 2007, however his rise on the charts began in 2013, with most of his success appearing from his 2016 debut studio album 'Islah'.
Kevin Gates is known primarily for his "confessional anthems" that blend often autobiographical lyrics with refined Southern beats. - VICE
Drum Mixing:
Samples. Kevin Gates drums are all about the samples, starting with hard hitting samples and mixing them so they hit even harder. How does the mix engineer (Joe Fitzgerald) do it?
Unable to find any interviews with the mixing engineer or anyone else for that matter about the mixing of any of his tracks, I've taken a stab at guessing what may be going on in these heavy popping drums!
First off, it's easy to hear the side-chaining that's happening on to the bass from the kick. This isn't a surprise however, it's extremely common to find this in hip-hop music to make the kick pop in front and drive the groove. Check out this article on side-chaining if you're confused!
The attack on the kick is pretty spot on and prominent in most of his tracks, usually the attack is harnessed and controlled to get that specific sound - One way hip-hop producers can do this is by using a compressor to increase the dynamic range (amplifying the attack and reducing everything else). This technique requires specific compressor settings - an attack based on the length of the slap of the kick (around 5-10ms), at least an 8:1 ratio, and a release time that's long enough that it doesn't bring up the tail, but also short enough so that the compressor is fully released before the next kick drum hits.
This compression technique is talked about in this video with mixing engineer Chris Carter, it brings the original attack of the kick up without changing the low end!
Another way I've discovered hip-hop mixers can add slap to the kick, is to duplicate the kick track and use a gate with a 10ms hold time and a 10ms release time on this new track. Then the threshold is adjusted until the attack of the kick clips through the gate. This adds slap because the now clipped attack blended in with the original adds a 'click' sound as it clips.
By using that gate, I'm creating high end - Chris Carter
In his hit '2 Phones' the snare sample is actually pitched, alternating between a higher pitch and a lower pitch. What Joe has done here, is actually automate a pitch plug-in to alternate between two different pitches that are in the key of the song, making the snare not only percussive but melodic as well!
The snare changes often throughout many of his songs, for example in 'Counting On Ya' the snare changes between a fat and full snare with a large room reverb and a fed-back delay, to what seems to be the same snare yet this time compressed much more, a longer decay on the verb and no delay for the chorus. It then also temporarily changes to another version of the same sample, this time EQ'd with a HPF and a LPF, resulting in a very thin sound to enhance dynamics and bring more power when the full bodied snare comes back in. This varied snare is just another layer of change that holds your interest in the song, leaving something different for you to hear in the mix.
One 'mistake' people can make, is to bus all of the sampled hip-hop drums together and apply compression. This is an issue because this often reduces the impact of the louder percussion samples due to compressing them with something potentially quieter, like hats. Samples can be treated as separate instruments, the genre expects that the hip-hop samples will cut through the mix individually - requiring no drum bus. Even the panning in this genre breaks the conventions of mixing for acoustic drums. The hats often pan separately across the entire stereo field, further distancing the sound of the drums in this specific genre to that on any recorded acoustic drum sound.
One last thing to be careful of, is the use of effects on the drums. Often reverb and delays are used very sparingly (depending on the song).
Vocal Mixing Techniques:
Let's take a close look at these vocals, they are absolutely the most important part of Kevin Gates, and most of hip-hop for that matter. They are the what draws you in as a listener, and keeps you coming back to this particular artist.
Position in mix:
They are mixed to take up most of the mix, absolutely right up the front and layered, so many layers. The lead vocal is always in the centre, and often complimented with doubles, harmonies, ad-libs and even melodic backing singing. These complimenting vocal parts are usually panned slightly off to the left or right. For example in '2 Phones' the chorus uses two doubles each panned around 30% left or right, with ad-libs during the verses even panning side to side as they come in and out. Back to the chorus there are a couple of melodic backing vocals that hold notes behind the hook, these, like the ad-libs, move around the stereo field as they play. All this isn't even mentioning the stereo effects that are going on with the reverbs and delays!
Parts:
In many of his songs his vocals really dominate the frequency spectrum, with many overlaying vocals on top of each other.
I’ve had mildly-spirited conversations with snooty audio engineers who believe that rap is beneath them, as they claim “Pfft, it’s just a two-track and a vocal. Anyone could do that.” What they ignore are the realities presented by the genre. - Phillip Nichols 2017
His track 'Had To' consists of his melodic leads and raps, two extra doubles, 3 telephone EQ ad-libs at any one time, 2 intermittent note holding filtered backing vocals and even a track that pops in with coughing and breathing.
Pitch Correction:
Many parts of Kevin Gates' vocal tracks are pitch corrected, sometimes subtly, sometimes very obviously, kinda like T-Pain for his hooks. Dusti Miraglia, In this article takes you through some typical vocal processing that big artists like Kevin Gates often use during choruses to grab that Auto-tuned sound. I'll be using Melodyne and possibly Waves Tune to process the vocals for Jimmy Yox, as these plug-ins excel at pitch and formant processing.
The secret to this technique is not really HOW it’s applied, but more WHEN to apply it. - Dusti Miraglia 2018
Here Dusti is talking about pitch correction, shifting and formant shifting. For example you could apply some of these tricks well, yet the song may now sound horribly boring because you've applied it to the whole song and suddenly it's no longer exciting and special. Therefore, using all of these vocal affecting plug-ins with careful creative thought and tasteful sparsity can really bring your track up to the next level!
Effects:
Reverb and Delays are actually used in abundance in many of Kevin Gates' tracks. While some of the verses in his tracks follow the typical 'extremely conservative' use of reverb and delay often found in the rap and hip hop genres, a lot of everything else is often saturated in short delays with either a single delay or a fair bit of feedback giving the delay several iterations. These delays are also often covered in reverb (over 50% mix perhaps), this pushes them back a bit when compared to the lead. Reverb is also used on some ad-libs during the choruses in 'Really Really', allowing the choruses to have this big sense of space even when the lead vocal stops for a second or so. It sounds like the reverbs used are often 'plate' and the delays are varied from ping pong panning to timed vocal delay throws.
Another effect used on the vocals is distortion. Distortion is used a lot on Kevin Gates, heavily on his ad-libs and doubles, enhancing their occasional 'telephone' sound and complimenting EQ. Lightly on his main vocal yet more attention is payed to which frequencies are distorted, and it is often automated as well, ebbing and flowing with the structure of each song. I'd guess that it's possible that mixing engineer Joe Fitzgerald used SoundToys Devil-Loc and/or Decapitator for this vocal sound. These two plug-ins are easily some of my favourites for vocals and excel at either adding subtle harmonics to vocals, or even when applied heavily they can still sound more natural than other distortion plug-ins on vocals.
Mastering:
Using BlueCats spectrum analyser I've had a look at the '2 Phones' master. Here we can see the overall balance of the frequencies that Joe Fitzgerald has ended up with. The vocals make up all of the peaks you can see from around 300Hz to 2kHz, really up the front! The kick and bass make up the entire low end and indeed are the loudest sounds in the song, with everything after 2kHz dipping down by 10 to 20dB.
Only after about 150Hz is there any stereo aspect in this track, this is a technique used in mastering, where the track is split into everything above and below around maybe 200Hz. A mono plug in is then inserted in the low end channel. This technique keeps all of the low end power steady and in the centre, keeping the groove from becoming confusing. I really enjoy the use of this technique, it can really clean up a mix if it's been provided to the mastering engineer with some stereo low end 'mud'. If I'm to speculate on the minor EQ likely done during mastering, I'd say that a small dip around 300 - 400Hz has been made to reduce 'boxiness', and there has probably been a slight high frequency shelf placed around 9kHz applied to the sides and not the mid. This will have brought out the panned hats a little more, giving the track a subtle 'sheen'. One more thingI'll say about the mastering is that it's been done excellently. I cannot hear any compression being done to the mix, nor is the track slammed into a brick wall limiter.
Though this track really looks like a sausage, I zoomed in on the peaks and found that almost none of them actually clip and distort. The track is really just professionally mixed and mastered in such a way that the gain reaches very close to 0dB without cutting the tops of any waveforms!
Surprisingly this Youtube mp3 download has a measurement of -8.4 LUFS integrated (Loudness Units Full Scale). This is odd because the YouTube standard is actually -13 LUFS.
I'll be making two versions of my masters of the Jimmy Yox tracks - one for Spotify at -14LUFS and one for YouTube at -13LUFS.
Conclusion:
I'll be spending most of my time on my Jimmy Yox mixing on the vocals. Processing and automating many different aspects of them. I plan on getting very creative with this and playing around with a lot of the different types of processing that I've talked about here. Seeing what I can achieve with the vocal recordings that I've been provided.
I'll be using several different Kevin Gates songs as my references and looking back at them often to reference balance, timbre and effects. I have no doubt I can achieve something that sounds as professional as this track!
Bibliography:
1. Miraglia, D. (2018). “The Gold Chain” - The Definitive Guide To Achieving Modern Trap (Travis Scott-Like) Vocals -. Retrieved from https://unison.audio/the-gold-chain/
2. Nichols, P. (2017). 8 Tips for Mixing Rap and Hip-Hop. Retrieved from https://www.izotope.com/en/blog/mixing/8-tips-for-mixing-rap-and-hip-hop.html
3. Nichols, P. (2017). 7 Tips for Mixing Vocals. Retrieved from https://www.izotope.com/en/blog/mixing/7-tips-for-mixing-vocals.html
4. Kramer, K. (2016). Kevin Gates Just Keeps Getting Better, Really. Retrieved from https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/rmj4vy/kevin-gates-just-keeps-getting-better-islah-interview
5. Carter, C. (2013). Mixing Hip Hop Drums with Chris Carter - ModernMixing.com. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upoVZOrlU1o
Comments