If you've ever felt that your vocals sounded glued on top of the mix instead
of sitting with the rest of the song, this email will help.
Below are the six frequency ranges you can start with when you are in trouble and need to figure out how to equalize your vocal so that it sits better with your song.
1. THE TOO LOW-RANGE
Feel free to filter out the low end of the vocal when mixing. 100 Hz is a good starting point.
Listening is critical here because you don’t want to cut out the singer’s character, especially if he has a good presence there in the lower register.
For female singers, you can go even higher. But be careful of Barry White and Leonard Cohen type singers, they may need that extra rumble in their voice.
2. THE THICK 150 HZ
For rounding out a vocal and making it more thick and full, search around the 150 Hz area.
Some singers sound thin and nasally and can do with a little meat on their vocal cords.
Boosting here can give the vocal more punch.
3. HONKY-BOXY 4-500 HZ
If your vocal track lacks definition and sounds boxy you can sweep around this area, even going so far as up to 800 Hz.
Remember that when cutting you should have your Q pretty narrow because you are trying to repair your recording, and cutting too broadly from the frequency spectrum will severely compromise the natural sound of the vocal.
4. NASALNESS AT 1 KHZ
If your vocalist sounds like they have a bit of a cold then cut around the 1 kHz area to get rid of it.
Too much of a cut will sound worse than just having a cold so make sure you’re subtle about it.
5. IN YOUR FACE PRESENCE OF THE 5 KHZ
If your singer doesn’t seem to be cutting through the mix, he might need to be presented to 5Khz.
It will push the track a little more to the front and give the singer a much-needed presence.
6. SIBILANCE AROUND THE 7 KHZ
Some people have more sibilance than others. The s’ sounds have much more energy than other consonants. If your singer has an excess of S’s you can try cutting around 7 kHz.
It will make the S’s less pronounced and won’t make them jump out too much. Better yet, inserting a de-esser or a compressor that only compresses the ‘s’ area can work even better.
Male sibilance is typically 3-7k Hz and female sibilance is typically 5-9k Hz so there needs to be some experimentation to find that annoying ‘s’ sound.
Fix Your Muddy Mixes
However, if your mix sounds muddy, it doesn’t matter how great the vocal EQ is.
Creating professional mixes from their home studio demos without making everything sound like a muddy mess is a common problem.
Home studio engineers and musicians like yourself want to create professional sounding recordings but still hit their head against a wall of muddy boom in their mixes.
If you want to make clean mixes where you can hear every instrument clearly, you’ll need to learn as much as you can about EQ.
Learning to use equalization (or EQ) is the first step towards great mixing skills. Knowing how frequencies interact and how to fit them all together is a crucial skill all engineers like yourself should have.
Today, you might be having trouble getting cleaner mixes.
Maybe your vocal sounds like it’s muffled under the other instruments that already sound like they’re under a blanket.
But after learning to EQ, you’ll be making all those instruments jump out of the speakers.
- You’ll learn to clean up the muddiness in your mixes.
- You’ll discover where to get rid of the boxy cardboard sound in your drums.
- You’ll know exactly which frequencies to boost to make your guitars, bass, and other instruments sound powerful.
And best of all, you’ll finally get your vocals to explode out of your speakers instead of drowning behind your instruments.
Now, instead of wandering around your mix trying to EQ without knowing where to look you can have everything right there at your fingertips with the Audio Issues EQ plug-in.
Hit this link to grab your copy.