Have you ever listened to a song and been left really unimpressed by the sound of the vocal?
I’m not talking about the vocal performance or the songwriting itself. I’m talking about the actual sound quality of the vocal.
Yes, there are many ways to record vocals and depending on the type of voice, there are a multitude of microphones you can use to capture a great vocal performance.
But what I’m talking about is primarily a mixing issue.
There’s a very simple EQ move that you can use on every single vocal of every mix you work on and it’s a sure thing that it will improve the quality of your vocal sound.
Now, if you think about capturing a vocal performance and mixing vocals, it doesn’t matter what the final product is going to sound like – the first thing we want is clarity.
Even if you’re going to add a heavy amount of distortion to the vocal to “dirty it up” for effect, you’ll still want to start with a well-recorded vocal that has a nice EQ balance. Otherwise, the distortion you add will emphasise not only the good parts of the performance and the frequency spectrum, but the bad parts too.
So, here’s the simple EQ move…
Put a high-pass filter (HPF) on the lead vocal at 80Hz
That’s your starting point. Not only does that work for the lead vocal but it works for all harmonies, background vocals and effects as well.
There are going to be next to no frequencies below 80Hz that will be beneficial to a solid vocal performance. In terms of vocals, all that’s in that range is mud, boom, rumble and most of what you’ll hear is unintelligible.
Don’t believe me? Monitor your lead vocal with a low-pass filter (LPF) at 80Hz and you can listen to what’s in that range.
Hear anything useful?
Ok, so I mentioned that the 80Hz HPF is the starting point. More often that not, I’ll go quite a bit higher than 80Hz into the 100Hz – 125Hz range. The only way you’ll know what’s right for you, is to try it out on your mix and experiment!
Here are three quick tips to do that:
- If you’re working with a vocalist who sounds a bit like Barry White, you’ll want to make sure you don’t cut out any of his power and incredible tone
- On the flip side of that, if you’re working with a tenor, you can probably cut a little bit more
- The same can be said for a female vocal. Females generally have less bass in their voice, so you adjust the filter to suit
If at any stage the vocal starts to sound “thin”, you’ve gone too far. Back off and find the sweet spot again. Sometimes it’s better to go too far, find the “thin point” and ease off from there. Again, you need to experiment with this on your own mix.
How do you know if the vocal is too thin?
You should be listening to the lead vocal in the context of the whole mix and using this EQ move relative to how all the other instruments sound. If you’ve done this right, your vocal will sound a lot more clear and you’ll notice slightly more definition in the low end elements of your mix – such as the kick and the bass.
Mixing can be confusing and my job is to clear up that confusion. There are few things in mixing and in life, that provide certainty.
This simple EQ move is something you can use with absolute certainty of the outcome.
I’ve made it a definite part of my mixing method for a long time now and it’s something I highly recommend you start using today and evermore.
Now, I’d love to know…
Where do you low cut your vocals?
Leave a comment below!
professional sounding mix every time...
One recommendation about EQ and compressions that I learned from Jason Moss (Behind the Speakers) it’s to put attention to the “P” and “B” sounds:
Do they sound too powerful and muddy? Cut more low-end.
Do they sound too thin, dead or they even dissapeared? You went too far.
Good point. I agree with Jason’s point to a certain extent but I would say it really depends on the voice. I definitely agree with the “thin” sound. If anything sounds “thin”, you’ve gone too far.
Thanks for the comment!
Hallo, good tip. I can learn thomething from you. Your way to “create space” I had printed to do.
Usually around 100 hz. My 3 favorite mic models for recording vocals are old dynamics from EV, the RE11,RE16, and RE18. They all have a low eq roll off switch at around 100 cycles. I guard those mics with my life, and they have never let me down. I’ll put those up against any condenser at any price and still get better results for a mix. Warmth and clarity at the same time.
Nice! You’ve given me a very strong mental image of you guarding those mics with your life like the Grail Knight from Indiana Jones!
I´ve got a mixer with a built in switch on/off lowcut on every micchannal. This works at 80 Hz. I find this very good and so I start in my DAW also – like you say – at 80 Hz. May be later higher – what kind of voice and music (and capture) it is, just listen, than do :-).
Nice work Gerd!
I use the HPF as needed……frequencies with nothing in that range go bye-bye no matter what the track is.
TIP: listen to each track individually and sweep to really hear the frequencies and determine what is useful to your mix. Keep the good stuff, dump the marginal or useless frequencies. I go through my static mix this way (in the beginning….before I really start mixing) and it’s a good way to hear what you’ve got, overall, in every track.
Vocals, as you say, depends on the voice and the tune and what you’re trying to affect. In one of my songs, “Rage”, I removed all frequencies below 300 Hz (in one part of the song) to get an affect I was looking for.
There are no rules…..only things that serve the tune or things that interfere with it.
Cheers
Some great tips here. Thanks Dave!
Hallo Dave, nice to meet you here, good tips. Thank you.