Mixing Smooth and Airy R&B Vocals (Main Vocals) [Excerpt]

Something In The Water got me feeling like I [Music] will press my buttons and get under all my skin [Music] so the important thing for me with this with with these vocals was to really fill out the space of the song because the beat is is not massively crowded either and the vocals are you know as you can see there's a lot of spaces in the vocals and as an engineer I love that because that means that I have the freedom to add some nice delays some reverbs which can really swell and fill the gaps

and that was the main kind of philosophy and aim behind this track and behind this mix it was really to add that atmosphere and that smoothness that you hear on these kind of r b songs so we'll start with the mean verse layer and I'll show you how it sounded raw and then we'll dive in to how I treated it Something In The Water got me feeling like I will press my buttons and get under all my skin so really nice recording good quality recording and really well performed but it just needs it just needs

so much to just bring it out you know when I hear a vocal like this with so much potential I'm dying to just dive in add some delays and reverbs compressions sweeten up the EQ and all of that so let's get started so first of all there is a touch of waves tune on this which is just an auto tune alternative now it's not making us sound like a robot in any way because that wouldn't suit the song at all and that's not what what we were after but it does just help to kind of

smooth things out overall so I won't play you before and after with this because it really doesn't make a massive difference to the sound so we'll just dive straight in to the EQ the first EQ which is a simple logic Channel EQ where all I'm doing as you can see is a high pass just to take out any rumbles or plosives on our vocal Something In The Water got me feeling like I will press my buttons and get under all my skin oh you'll press my buttons and get under all my skin so really not

doing much very subtle there's a slight boost here at 200 as well then we get into the SSL Channel so all I'm doing here is a touch of EQ I'm boosting a little bit here in the high end and I'm dipping a little bit in the low mids as well this just brings a little bit more clarity to the mix sweetens it up a little bit so this is before and after Something In The Water got me feeling like I said something in the water got me feeling like I so it just adds a little

bit of Shimmer but we're gonna add a little bit more later on as well then this is the first compressor this is the rvox I still love this plug-in oil press my buttons and get under all my skin oh you'll press my buttons and get under all my skin so that's really just adding a little bit of level and taking off some slight Peaks next we've got the waves de-esser Something In The Water got me feeling like I Something In The Water got me feeling like I yeah just that's the first yes sir there's a

couple of DS's in this chain overall so next in the chain is our compressor and this is the main compressor on the vocal and this is really going to push down the Peaks and bring the dips up to kind of give you a much more consistent level in the vocal oh you'll press my buttons and gets under all my skin nice so that's all the things on the actual Channel apart from the sins and the reverbs and things but then we go on to the actual main vocal boss so once I finish processing the channel

we send it to bus 2 which is my Vogue my main vocal boss and then we do more processing on there so there's another compressor here but this is not doing a whole lot oh you'll press my buttons and get under all my skin oil press my buttons and get under all my skin so again just bringing more consistency in level and add in a little bit of tone and then we've got another de-esser something in our water we know you only tonight [Music] something in our water we know you only tonight not doing a

whole lot but it just helps to smooth out the vocal once again after that in the chain this is something I used to use a long time ago this is CLA vocals by waves and with this all we're doing is a slight bit of EQ and we're adding a little touch of Reverb And Delay to the overall vocal boss Something In The Water got me feeling like ice Something In The Water got me feeling like I so just adding a little bit of life to the vocals next we've got another DSR which is not doing

a whole lot the mix dry knob is down a little bit as you can see but this will really smooth out the vocal even more oil press my buttons and get under all my skin next is the real sweet now and this is where the final EQ on the main vocal comes and this is a dynamic EQ so what I'm doing here in these areas where I'm boosting so this High mid in particular you can see that I'm also compressing that area so that it brings it up but when it gets too loud it controls

it so this is a nice way of boosting frequencies without them getting too harsh or too overbearing because it's going to push down when it gets too much so check this out Something In The Water got me feeling like I Something In The Water got me feeling like I will press my buttons and get under all my skin so it's adding some nice high mids and highs up here but without letting them get overbearing because he's pulling down on them when they get too hot and same with the low mids here and that's really it

in terms of EQ and compression on this vocal now we're going to jump over to verse 2 to focus on the actual sends the Reverb And Delay that I used basically for this vocal so this is the verse with all that same processing that I just showed you but dry with no uh reverbs and delays added waves you have me swimming right around [Music] something in the way you got me feeling right now so the first thing I added was a ping pong delay which is sort of a stereo delay to the vocal so this

is before and after you had me swimming right around something in the way you got me feeling right now so really sweet really nice um just really helps to fill that Gap nicely and also it's a bit of air candy you know going from left to right so people listening in headphones will really appreciate this um next is my Airbus now what this is is basically this plug-in by Waze which adds some sort of upper harmonics over here so we're just basically adding some real nice high-end Sheen with this we've already added quite a bit

but with a track like this you can never get too much of that so this is without and with something in the ways you have me swimming right around something in the way you got me feeling right now by you down up and write your sounds so I turned it right up there to exaggerate the effect that that's doing because it is quite subtle but you'll see it just adds sort of like an upper an upper harmonic sort of distortion which kind of kind of sounds sweet you know and then next we've got the main

Reverb and let me play this part down here with and without to show you what that's doing up and by yourself so you are normalizing we're falling I'm better whenever I don't answer your call We Touch and Go still on my soul I'm Indigo and going overload I'll to close the liquid gold still on my own you so that's the finished sound of the verse vocal something and the water got me feeling like I [Music] will press my buttons and get under all my skin [Music] something in our water we know you only tonight [Music]

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