When it comes to mixing Hip Hop, vocals can be some of the most fun elements to work with. Other times, they can prove difficult with a broad dynamic range, problems with the original recording, and having to fit them into a two-track instrumental when you cannot get the multitrack.
In this puremix.net exclusive, Hip Hop mixing mogul, Rich Keller, teaches you the techniques he has used on thousands of smash hit tracks on a song from Nicky G, produced by Baby Winsch.
See how Rich Keller:
Creates a harmony of the lead track to enhance the hook and add dimension
Enhances a two track beat from the producer
Breaks down his classic vocal setting for the Distressor he used on classic records from Nas, DMX, and many more
Makes the vocal shine with subtle moves on an SSL eq
Uses the dynamics section of an SSL channel strip plugin to make the vocal sit in the track, adding a glue between the vocal and the mix
Adds dynamic ambience to the vocal using Valhalla Shimmer and the Boz Imperial Delay in series
Explains his approach to the mix bus, using the Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor, Fabfilter's Saturn saturation and Pro-L2.
Teaches how to use the latest version of the Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor
Uses the Fabfilter Saturn across the mix bus to add harmonic excitement and top end sheen
Dials in the Pro-L2 to control peaks
Watch Rich Keller, mix "Hero" from Nicky G. Only on pureMix.net
00:00:09 Rich Keller here. I'm gonna walk you
through a really basic setup here.
00:00:13 The track is called 'Hero',
the artist is Nicky G.
We've got a two track mix from
Baby Winsch is the producer.
00:00:21 And one track of vocal.
00:00:23 So let's walk through it
and see what we can do
to fix up what it needs
and add somethings that
it doesn't have yet.
00:00:31 We'll take a listen now,
I'm mixing in Logic,
which is not my preferred,
I'm really a Pro Tools guy but when
something comes in Logic like this
I just work with it,
it's not that complicated
so I can actually handle it.
00:00:43 So right now the plug-ins are off.
00:00:44 Let's take a listen
to what we've got
I'll leave the limiter in just for safety.
00:02:42 Alright, I think that shows
enough of what we've got,
another verse there,
we'll hear it all later at the end.
00:02:47 A few things that pop
up to me right away.
00:02:49 Obviously the vocals,
there was no
compression when he cut.
00:02:54 This is a home-studio
basement recording.
00:02:57 And it sounds like he's either
moving around
or he's just really dynamic
on the mic with certain words
and he's leaning in
so there's a very
wide dynamic range.
00:03:07 So what definitely gonna have to
clamp him down
so we can focus his vocal sound
and hear him all the time,
I don't want him moving in
and out of the mix picture.
00:03:17 The beat sounds good,
it sounds fat.
00:03:20 The producer gave us a nice
two track to work with here
so probably not alone
is gonna happen to that,
at least individually,
on its own track
but we'll do some blending
on the vocal and the track together
on the master fader at the end.
00:03:33 Another thing I noticed with the vocal
is that in the Chorus
it's just kind of flat,
it's just kind of sitting there,
I like his hook, it's a good hook
but it doesn't have
any added dimension,
it doesn't feel like the Chorus.
00:03:48 So, I've taken the liberty
of creating
a harmony track.
00:03:54 It's very subtle
but it's gonna fatten up the
Chorus and make the song pop.
00:03:59 So, starting with the Chorus,
I'll just loop the Chorus for right now.
00:04:04 I'm gonna solo the main vocal for a
second, just to get a flavor of that
so you can hear what we start with.
00:04:15 OK, that's the sound there.
00:04:17 So, on the harmony track,
I'm using Auto-Tune,
let's take a look at that.
00:04:22 Now I've got it set to E minor,
which is the key of the song,
I'm using it actually stock.
00:04:29 He's very much in tune already,
I'm just using Auto-Tune
to just, you know,
keep him there.
00:04:34 But I'm not pushing it really hard,
I don't want it to be
an audible Auto-Tune,
I don't wanna hear the robot voice
and none of that.
00:04:40 We're not going for any of that.
My 'humanize' is at zero,
my 'flex-tune' is at zero.
00:04:45 And my 'retune speed' is
at the stock default of 20.
00:04:48 So, that's the basic sound in that.
00:04:50 And to create the harmony
I'm using the 'Little Alterboy'.
00:04:54 This guy right here.
00:04:56 Let's take a listen
to that real quick.
00:05:09 So this is created using just a copy
of the main lead vocal,
a copied it to a new track
and put the Alterboy on it
with Auto-tune.
00:05:18 So, now let's hear the two vocals together
so we can hear the harmony.
00:05:35 And really quickly let's hear
that with the track.
00:05:52 Also, the Auto-Tune on the primary
Chorus vocal
is the same as for the harmony vocal.
00:05:59 To achieve the harmony,
what I did,
I raised the pitch
5 half steps on the 'Little Alterboy'.
00:06:06 It's a perfect fourth
and I'm just running
a parallel harmony,
it's not a diatonic harmony,
it's not the vocal engine creating a
diatonic harmony,
it's a parallel fourth harmony,
which happens to work
well on this track.
00:06:18 If I needed to do
a diatonic harmony
I would do that with
a different plug-in
but this is working
great for this purpose.
00:06:24 Let's take a listen to the
harmony, the lead and the track.
00:06:44 Definitely much
better for the Chorus,
it gives the Chorus some dimension
and something bigger.
00:06:51 In music in general
the Chorus is gonna be
the big main part and the verse
is gonna come down
and give us the storyline.
00:07:00 So we always want the Chorus to pop
and give it some sort
of energy somehow,
either through the track or the vocals,
what have you.
00:07:06 And if you only get
one track of vocals
you can see there are
things you can't do.
00:07:10 Taking a look at the
track here real quick.
00:07:13 I used the transient,
Elysia Envelope.
00:07:17 It's a transient designer
which has the attack
and the sustain.
00:07:21 Let me show you how
I use that on the track,
I'm gonna solo the track here.
00:07:25 And we'll pop this in and out.
00:07:28 And what I did was just
add some punch
around 120, somewhere in there,
between 100 and 150,
and then also just
I brought up the sustain
around 1 kHz so I can hear
all the guitar's intricacies.
00:07:42 So, a little more punch and brought
out a little more of the mids.
00:07:45 Let's take a listen,
first without and then I'll add it in.
00:08:11 Yeah, that's just kind of waking up
the track a little bit.
00:08:13 And giving it a little more knock
which will translate better
on smaller speakers.
00:08:18 Now let's take a look at
the processing on the vocals
to make them bite and
bring them out.
00:08:23 If we look at the screen here,
so these two tracks right here,
'Audio 2' and 'Audio 7'
are the Chorus
and they're going to Bus 2
which is right here.
00:08:33 I'll go down the list and add
some plug-ins in
and let you know what I've done
with them after we listen to it.
00:09:25 OK, so,
in constructing this vocal sound
let's start with the Distressor.
00:09:30 The Distressor for me is
main go-to plug-in for vocal
and just about almost every
vocal I've done,
specially on all the early DMX stuff,
when the Distressor first came out,
back in the 90s
I've always used,
I have one in my rack right here.
00:09:44 I love it and this
is a go-to setting
that I use for vocals,
most of the time.
00:09:50 So on the Nas records,
the DMX records,
all that, it's all using the Distressor.
00:09:55 And with this setting.
00:09:57 It's the opto setting,
I got to the 10:1
and the attack
it's either wide open,
all the way, pass 10,
or all the way down to 8,
it depends on how
much I wanna cut in.
00:10:09 I'm not really looking
to get the big attacks,
I'm looking to hold the whole
vocal down, just kind of
squeeze it all together,
I'm not going for the transients.
00:10:18 Although we'll catch a lot of them,
I could dig a lot deeper
into a faster attack
but I'm not interested
with this to do that.
00:10:25 I just wanna decrease the dynamic
range of the entire vocal.
00:10:29 Having said that, also,
what's important about this setting here
is how I've got the
detector and the audio.
00:10:36 For the detector, I'm bypassing
the low frequencies
so I don't want the compressor
triggering off any low frequency pops
or foot stomps or anything like that
that may be present in the vocal,
I don't want that.
00:10:48 So, I'm gonna eliminate
that from the detector
and also, Dave Derr,
the inventor of this plug-in
and the Distressor,
he's got a mid frequency detector,
I think it's around 1 kHz,
to catch
harsh frequencies.
00:11:02 Actually, it's a side-chain detector
so you're not hear any kind
of curve,
it's just detecting
those frequencies and triggering the
compressor off just those frequencies.
00:11:13 Now, as far as the audio
signal pass-through,
I've continued the hi-pass here
so the hi-pass is cleaning up
the low frequencies there.
00:11:22 I believe it's at 100 or 80,
it's somewhere in there,
I don't think he
would put it too high
but I don't even
know where it is
but it works great.
00:11:29 And I always use the
'Distortion 2' setting,
the yellow light, for vocals.
00:11:34 I mean, 'Distortion 3' has its uses
but it's just a
little too much of an overdrive
and you actually
hear the crackling.
00:11:39 So, I prefer the 'Distortion 2',
it's a little cleaner,
it adds a little bite and
grit to the vocal.
00:11:46 And generally I set my input level,
I hit it pretty hard,
the Distressor is very transparent
and you can spank it pretty hard
and it will take it.
00:11:55 And without messing up the sound
or sounding overly pumped.
00:12:00 I'm generally well into the yellow
on peaks and I'll even get
into the red a little bit, 12, 14.
00:12:06 I'll push it up there.
00:12:08 So, let's go back to
the setting I had here.
00:12:10 And let me just solo here
the first half a little, we can do some
in and out with it.
00:12:15 Let me get a little loop going here.
00:12:18 And I'll play with the settings
so you can see what's going on.
00:12:35 Listen to that first line
where he says 'hero'.
00:12:39 He's really moving it,
then he kind of goes away.
00:13:09 Well, it definitely smoothed it out.
00:13:11 So, that's working for me.
00:13:13 But let's take a listen real
quick without the distortion
because the 'hero'
does get a little hot.
00:13:17 Let's try without the
Distortion setting.
00:13:48 I think in this instance,
because he's so loud on the 'hero',
we're gonna leave the Distortion off.
00:13:54 And just let it be clean,
it's cleaner without it.
00:13:56 We're gonna rock with that.
00:13:59 So, even though we have
preset settings that we like
you always have to listen and deal
with what you have in front of you,
not what you did last week.
00:14:08 So, even thought I've used this plug-in
a million times
with that Distortion 2 on,
for this instance,
for his voice,
for how hot he recorded it,
we're gonna go without it,
because it's cleaner.
00:14:20 Let's go down the line here,
let me put this guy away.
00:14:24 And I'll gonna add the bx_console,
I'm a fan of this plug-in
and I like the brown EQ,
it has a certain curve
to it that I just love.
00:14:33 But I'm also doing some other
things with the compression.
00:14:36 Let's take a listen,
I'll turn on and off the plug-in
as we go here.
00:14:41 Let me extend our
listening section here
for the entire chorus.
00:15:02 We gotta a few things going on,
you can see I'm giving it a
little bit of shine
up at the top, a little 4 kHz and
a little 16 kHz with the 'bell',
just to put a little peak on it.
00:15:11 I'm gonna spin those EQs
just so you can hear
how they're affecting the vocal.
00:15:38 And you'll also notice here,
if you look in down here,
this is pre-dynamic
so what this means is
that I'm sending the EQ
into the dynamics.
00:15:46 So, what I'm getting is the EQ first
and then into the compressor.
00:15:50 Which,
if you notice here, I have a pretty
extreme setting on this compressor.
00:15:54 Why? Because I feel like he needs it.
00:15:56 I feel like the vocal is still bouncing
all over the place, it's still too much
in different frequencies,
so what I've done
is put a fast attack on here
with the infinity setting, right?
Like 91:1 here,
almost all the way to top,
not quite,
and I'm gonna
pull this back and play the music
and dial it in and you can hear
what happens to the vocal
when I do that.
00:16:52 It just adds that little
bit more glue to his vocal.
00:16:56 It keeps him tucked into that track.
00:16:58 Because the track is very consistent,
very tight
and I want him to be the same.
00:17:02 If he's too dynamic
then it's gonna sound separate.
00:17:06 You get that separate feeling
so I'm trying to just blend
him in and tuck him in
without distorting him
and without crushing him completely.
00:17:15 I think I'm achieving that.
00:17:17 Now, I put a little bit of
the Valhalla on him here.
00:17:20 I mean, very very little.
00:17:21 Let's take a listen to that.
00:17:23 Let's actually mute the beat.
00:17:35 So, this is kind of doing
a non-linear reverb
with a slap.
00:17:40 It's kind of a classic
thing from the 80s,
they used to do it on rim-shots
and background vocals.
00:17:46 It's a very tight reverb,
it's a non-linear reverb
and with a pre-delay on it
so it creates like a
slapback echo effect.
00:17:55 The reason I chose the effect of
the non-linear with the slap on it
is to give it that 3D kind of dimension.
00:18:03 Generally I would make busses
for the effects
but in this instance
I just put it in line.
00:18:09 Because there's no other
vocal tracks
that's gonna be on so I just
created the one
sound for the Chorus vocal.
00:18:16 And I added to that,
on top of that
I put
this delay, I really like this
Imperial Delay, it's a dynamic delay
which is great,
the ducking feature right here,
so you don't have to
bother with the side-chain
when you wanna have
a dynamic delay.
00:18:29 It also has drive on it,
it's got all kinds of
colors, pitch left and right
and you can do whatever
you want with it.
00:18:36 So, I'm gonna mute the shimmer
so you can really hear just
what the delay is doing.
00:18:40 Even thought it's doing a
very similar type of effect,
the one big difference
is that it's dynamic.
00:18:46 The delay is gonna be ducked
while he's rapping
and it's only gonna come up
in the wholes or the gaps
between the words
wherever he leaves one.
00:18:53 So,
the Valhalla is always on
on everything,
it's ambiance for the whole track.
00:18:59 And the delay
is just
to be an echo
to fill in the gaps
when he's not rapping.
00:19:07 So, I'll play the Imperial Delay alone,
just to hear the dynamic
delay and what it's doing.
00:19:29 Let's solo just the
Valhalla again real quick.
00:19:39 Notice how we hear the slap
always from the Valhalla.
So that's creating the ambiance
and then
together now,
the Imperial with the Valhalla
is creating an ambiance
with the slap.
And the slap
is also taking
the Valhalla with it
because it's before it, right?
So, the echo has it's
own ambiance as well.
00:20:14 Great, so that's that.
00:20:15 And now let's listen
to it with the track.
00:20:32 Once again, soloed
the vocal sounds actually
pretty wet, pretty effected.
00:20:37 But in the track,
they sound pretty dry,
they're blended in with the track,
the guitar is very ambient
so that's why I had to add
some ambiance to the vocals
so they don't sound like they separate
from something else,
I want them to blend in.
00:20:51 So that's thus the two effects
to fill it in to the track.
00:20:55 And the dynamic control,
and very subtle EQ,
no much EQ going on
to make it match and blend in.
00:21:02 Let's move over to the verse
very quick
and see what's going on with that.
00:21:06 It looks like Nicky laid his
verse in pieces here.
00:21:09 Which is fine.
00:21:10 The first thing I always check:
Are there any overlaps?
He doesn't have any in this.
00:21:17 By overlaps I mean
when the end of one line
literally overlaps
by one word or multiple words,
sometimes whole phrases overlap,
he'd be ending one rap
and starting another.
00:21:29 So then,
those need to be
treated in a certain way
but he's not doing that
so I'm fine
with different tracks
all summed into one bus.
00:21:38 If he was overlapping
I would be summing them
to two different busses.
00:21:42 And I'll explain that why later.
00:21:44 Let's turn on our plug-ins here.
00:21:46 The same vocal sound,
the same settings.
00:21:49 Everything is the same here,
I'm keeping it consistent.
00:21:52 And let's listen to a little
of his verse,
the chorus going into the verse.
00:22:36 So, there's the verse.
00:22:37 Exactly the same sound
as the chorus
but it doesn't have
the harmony on it.
00:22:41 So that's the only difference,
the effects and the EQ is the same,
the compression is the same.
00:22:46 Alright, so let's take a look
at the master fader.
00:22:48 I've got
three plug-ins on here,
I've got the Shadow Hills,
an amazing compressor
and I also have the FabFilter,
which might be a
surprise to some people,
something like this on the master bus,
but I'm doing very
specific things with it
and it's doing a killer job.
00:23:04 And then on the tail end
I have the FabFilter L2
just as a basic limiter,
really not doing much with itj at all.
00:23:11 So I'll bring these down,
let's bring them in step by step,
now they're all bypassed
so I'll play the music
and add in the Shadow Hills,
see what it's doing for our mix.
00:23:46 It's not doing a lot.
00:23:48 It's doing very little
but it's a big little.
00:23:51 So,
that's a bit confusing,
it's a subtle thing
but it's providing the glue
and it just fattens up
the bottom and glues
things together.
00:24:02 So that's really all
I'm looking for,
with the Shadow Hills
small moves are everything.
00:24:07 For those of you how
aren't familiar with it
the way the meter is,
when you're doing it in master mode
the left meter is for
the optical compressor
and the right meter
is for the discrete compressor.
00:24:19 And the optical is what it says,
it's just like and LA-2A,
the ultimate optical compressor,
the original.
00:24:25 So, an optical compressor is just
smoothing over the signal
and reacting with
the light sensitivity.
00:24:32 And the discrete is more like
the SSL 2-Bus mixer
which you can adjust
the ratio,
the attack and the release times.
00:24:40 I'm gonna move the thresholds
around a little bit
so you can hear when it's gone too far
and why we used it in
very subtle amounts.
00:25:17 So you see, I pushed it all the way up
to where the gain reduction
was like around -4.
00:25:24 Which is a typical gain reduction
on a SSL style compressor,
a bus compressor,
but over here is obviously
way too much
so I just want to kind of
draw a distinction between the two.
00:25:36 So, wherever you use the
Shadow Hills you have to go
no more than 1 dB of gain reduction
on either side.
00:25:43 So let's just check the
optical and see what that does
when we push it up a little bit more.
00:25:58 Already you can hear,
it just sucks the life right off the mix.
00:26:02 If you go a little too far
it's all gone,
but used very subtly,
it gives you just the little bit
of glue that you're looking for.
00:26:09 So, moving down the list,
next we've got the Saturn,
let's open this baby up.
00:26:14 What I'm looking for here
is to really kind of
brighten up the track
and add some energy to it
because I feel like even
through the Shadow Hills,
although I'm getting the glue
it feels kind of closed,
like it's got a cloth over it,
like a thin blanket,
it feels a little bit muffled,
a little bit closed
and a little bit wompy.
00:26:34 So, I'm gonna use the Saturn here
to open up the highs
with some harmonic saturation.
00:26:40 Let's hear what it sounds like.
00:26:42 So right now it's off,
we just got the Shadow Hills in.
00:27:10 You can hear clearly
it's definitely pushing up
some high-end.
00:27:13 You can hear the different bands,
what they're doing.
00:27:16 So, let's dissect it a little bit.
00:27:18 I'll push up on some
of these frequencies
and show you what I'm doing
while I'm doing it.
00:27:23 I'm bumping up the high-band here,
almost 4 dB.
00:27:27 That's a lot of what
we're hearing here.
00:27:28 And there's no
saturation drive on here.
00:27:31 So now we go the high-mid band
and this is usually where
I'll push a little saturation.
00:27:38 Let's hear what it sounds like
when I push up a little bit more.
00:27:53 The mix is already at
the edge of saturated
so I'm not gonna add
any drive on that.
00:27:59 And what I did here
was I gained another
4 dB pump so really what I'm doing is
I get the lows here
and the highs here,
I just kind of shifted the highs
and the high-mids
as a crossover type of situation.
00:28:12 There's no saturation here
and I pulled away a
lot of the subs here.
00:28:16 And now let's add our
L2 at the end of the chain.
00:28:20 And that's the final glue
that puts it all together.
00:29:01 I'm not looking for the
L2 to change the sound
I'll usually just take it to
-1, -2 on the gain reduction.
00:29:09 And that's it.
00:29:10 I'm not looking for it to
do a lot other than to be
my safety limiter.
00:29:13 A little bit of a catch-all for that.
00:29:16 And as far as my
loudness units, my LUFS,
my RMS average volume,
typically I'm at,
you know, -9 to -11
is where I generally deliver my mixes.
00:29:28 Because it's in between where
the streaming services want it
and the loudness that the client wants
when they just have the raw file.
00:29:34 Where they sell the file, you know?
So, -9 to me still has
plenty of dynamic range,
it's not crushing it
yet it's hot enough
to feel like it's hot when
they pump it in the car,
you know, off the phone.
00:29:47 It's standing up to
industry standards.
00:29:49 So there it is,
it's a pretty straight forward
simple mix,
it didn't take very long.
00:29:56 But I think we helped the track,
gave it Al little bit
more punch and clarity,
we were able to add a
dimension to the chorus,
which musically that's super
important, that makes the song pop
and the artist was super surprised
to hear that and happy about it.
00:30:10 And it's nothing he could have sung,
I mean, who can sing parallel fourths
unless you are a monk
who does it everyday
at sunrise.
00:30:20 Yeah, I think it's very effective
and we got the job done
so thanks for listening.
Once logged in, you will be able to read all the transcripts jump around in the video.
With 4 Grammy Award nominations, 29 Platinum albums, and over 75 million albums sold, it is no surprise that Rich has continued to be a first call mixer and producer for hip hop and R&B royalty like Snoop Dogg, DMX, Jay Z, Nipsey Hussle Alicia Keys, Swizz Beatz, Lil Wayne, Mariah Carey, Method Man, Rick Ross, and many many more.
Rich's career spans the breadth of hip hop since 1992, earning him official "OG" status.
Rich attended North Texas State University and the City College of New York where he studied jazz bass with legendary bassist Ron Carter.
Exactly what I was looking for. Got thrown into logic doing just this. Thanks for removing the mystery!
lucas.med
2021 Mar 06
Aos 04:40 quando encaixou o beat... oh... eu quase chorei, genial ! abraços do Brasil !!
lvbthoven
2021 Jan 23
This may be my favorite puremix video! A skilled veteran, doing triage, in pitstop record time! But, given the reference to diatonic scales, "listen to what's in front of you", I think one of those monks has got to give himself up... the only F natural in the track was the one that got added. There are F#'s in the guitar part that would make parallel 4ths idea all good until that one word. You know the one, right?
lvbthoven
2021 Jan 23
Anybody notice the F natural in the auto tune harmony part? A segment on engineers who what to be producers would be interesting.
aranilemusic
2021 Jan 07
With all due respect and I am just a student but wouldn’t the vocal have benefited from some repair work before hand due to the distortion baked in from the lack of gain staging during tracking? Izotope de-clip would of done a great job smoothing this out to make mixing less tedious. In my humble opinion and respect to the teacher
alexgabaa
2020 Dec 06
Awesome!!!
matt.hag
2020 Nov 25
A lot of negative comments here. But the reality is that in the modern era of 'audio engineering' this is actually an extremely useful video because of:
A) how quick he mixes the song
B) how minimal his mix is as far as tools he uses
C) how minimal the production is and how he manages to make 'more' out of having 'less'.
If you're a 'lower level' professional engineer like myself or most engineers in the industry, these are issues that frequently come up in day to day studio situations when your bread and butter are nickel and dime artists with low budgets
Thanks for the great content guys!
daniel.wolf
2020 Nov 22
And again... Clipping due to no gain staging. A little disappointing tbh
Phantom Studios
2020 Nov 19
Excellent video, perfect length with lots of useful information. Thank you!
dspasic
2020 Nov 15
the distressor part - to my ears it isn't smoothed out, it's ruined (specially the part 'hero' where you pointed at). The word is just ruined, not leveled.. Other than that great video!
AriJordan20
2020 Nov 12
It would help if we could get a more in-depth tutorial on 2 track mixes or just more in general. This appears to be one of the biggest challenges with mixing hip hop today. This was a great tutorial by the way especially with the use of single vocals and making them come to life. Also, will we be getting the session files for this to work with on our own?
Danbouch
2020 Nov 11
What is so wrong with dynamic vocals? Soundcloud, YOOOOTUBE and the like are going to destroy it anyhow.
Jakjonez
2020 Nov 11
yesssss sir do more use the uad plugins and protools. but Recording over the stereo track is big in hiphop rap we need more knowledge on this guys thanks again keep knocking it out the park.. #madd Love from northern Ca
