When people send me mixes to critique, there are two things I listen for more than anything else: the drums and the vocals. These two elements of a mix are great indicators of the quality of the mix (and the mixer). Today I want to look at an often overlooked part of the vocal mixing process.
Clean Up The Vocal Breaths
Even if you don’t like to do much editing to your tracks, if there’s just one thing you DO edit, make it the lead vocal. By simply cleaning up the vocal breaths in between phrases you can give your mix a more professional polish and enhance the overall vibe of your tracks.
Comments
Hey Graham,
I linked over to this 31 days of tips, over on my blog, http://WWW.HomeRecordingWeekly.com and I have been following along as well. Great tips, and great quality too! Your vids rock! Thanks for the links too!
Thanks so much!
I worked with a female singer with a dry mouth. Her vocal tracks had that dry mouth clicking sound peppered throughout. Of course compression made it worse. I also used cut/fades to eliminate them. Lesson? Always keep the singers hydrated.
Graham i just became really aware of tis with the singer in my band, and being about to mix our first EP by myself, I noticed how much of this i have to do because it’s all full of vocal walls, anyway, your way of keeping it but in a more natural way is a really nice tip, thanks Graham.
This is so, so, so important to get that vocal that jumps out of the speakers as opposed to the “guy singing in a room” (ha!) sound. I have nothing to add except for one little thing that I do, when appropriate: I normally fade out all breathing noises, but I will leave an audible breath right before the chorus or bridge (or both). It’s a really subtle way to let the listener know that a change is coming, just like a drummer might open the hat a little, or a guitarist might syncopate a couple of notes. Graham, your site is great, please keep up the awesome work!
I’m absolutely LOVING this series. Have learned a ton and been refreshed on so much more!
After watching this vid (something I am sorta OCD about, especially with vocals), I wanted to give a little suggestion. I used to clean up vocals this way, until I found out about the wonders of Strip Silence! (Under edit, or Command+U)
It’s parameters work just like a compressor and it gives you options. Separate the regions, get rid of everything BUT the silence, or strip all the silent stuff under the threshold.
Just thought I’d spread the love of something that would have saved me TONS of time while editing Toms!!!!!!!!!
Thanks again for putting this series together!
Hi Vaughan. Yeah, I love Stip Silence and use it all the time. Just wanted to show people a non-Pro Tools specific technique. Plus you have to go in manually anyway and do the appropriate fades. Glad you’re liking the videos!