00:00:23 We have gotten ourselves to
the background vocals.
00:00:27 This will be kind of a Chorus thing
because that's where all the
background vocals are.
00:00:32 Let's go to the Chorus.
00:00:47 I've opened up the background vocal bus,
just let me get this balanced
and then we can talk about
how I'm approaching treating
the background vocal bus.
00:01:23 Let's move over the EQ and
compression that we like
on the lead vocal bus.
00:01:29 We'll pull the de-esser over too.
00:01:50 I'll turn the harmonies off for a moment
to find the place that I want to blend
and balance the double vocal.
00:02:09 I'll put some FX on this,
but I wanna get them balanced first
and the talk about
the way I'm treating them.
00:02:16 As I have been doing I like
to treat things first as groups.
00:02:21 I'll roll off some of
these low frequencies
on the voices.
00:02:26 I mean, I know we've got a
little bit of that already going on
for the double vocal
but we're just gonna
do it for the whole group.
00:02:32 Background vocals we don't really need
the full low-end punch,
that's for the lead vocal.
00:02:37 We need them to fill in and color
what the lead vocal is doing
and most of that, the harmony is in
and the double vocal, most of that energy
really kind of needs to be in the
mid-range and upper frequencies.
00:02:50 We don't need
the low frequencies,
we're gonna leave all of that
weight and forwardness feeling,
for the lead vocal.
00:02:57 That's what this EQ is about.
00:02:59 I don't necessarily yet feel
like we need to do any sort of
mid-range boost,
open the top up,
because of the way that
I'm using the Studer plug-in,
it's adding a little bit
of tape compression
and a little saturation.
00:03:13 It's gonna give us that
mid-range presence
when I choose that right
settings on the Studer.
00:03:17 As you can see,
I've got the input kind of turned up,
I want to be sure that I'm sending
a pretty healthy level through
the tape emulation so that we're
getting that saturated tape sound.
00:03:28 The same as I experimented with the
tape formulas on the stereo mixbus
with the ATR 102,
I'm gonna do that
with the Studer and find
a tape formula
that sounds like it's suiting
the timbre, and space that the
background vocals need to fill.
00:04:03 I chose 456.
00:04:05 We talked about earlier why
I got away from the
456 formula on the 102.
00:04:11 Because it has a little bit of a softer
sound, especially in the mid-range.
00:04:14 This is filling out that
upper mid-range sound
that we were talking about,
wanting on the background vocals.
00:04:20 So just by just changing the tape formula
I haven't had to do any specific extra EQ.
00:04:25 Now let's get the level working right.
00:04:47 It's doing two things for me:
It's making it feel a little bit compressed,
there's a little bit of tape
compression and saturation.
00:04:53 It's also gluing everything together
by running the background vocals
together
through this tape emulation plug-in
it's giving them some common
saturation and harmonic
content that helps stitching
them together sonically.
00:05:10 You can see that I elevated
the input level to get it
to a healthy level through here.
00:05:15 And then I've somewhat
taken down an equal amount on the output.
00:05:19 The net result through
this plug-in should be
very little level change.
00:05:24 What we're hearing as it's coming forward
is the coloration I'm talking about.
00:05:29 I'll play one more time,
when it's bypassed you can hear how
the vocals are a little bit more dynamic
and they don't feel as joined together
and they don't sit behind the lead
vocal in the same way.
00:05:40 This time we'll start it
without and then I'll add it in.
00:06:03 It makes it sound pretty
polished and finished to me.
00:06:06 Then the last little thing here,
is just a little bit of
gentle compression.
00:06:11 The tape machine is
doing quite a lot for me.
00:06:14 I feel like I've got it more than halfway
to where I want it,
that sounds pretty great already.
00:06:20 And this is probably doing a little bit
of compression that we haven't seen yet.
00:06:27 It's just barely hitting
with any compression.
00:06:30 I love this compressor,
in this particular instance,
as much as anything,
it's just the sound of it.
00:06:35 Let's get this balanced
in here a little bit better.
00:07:22 I'm just using the compressor
just to add a little bit of tonal glue,
just a touch of compression
when it gets a little bit loud.
00:07:31 The tape machine is
doing most of the work.
00:07:33 I don't wanna add reverb
to the double vocal because
I don't wanna cloud the
reverb of the lead vocal.
00:07:39 I'm just gonna add
just a hint of delay to it.
00:07:42 Just to widen it out a little bit.
00:07:44 Let's see where our
delay setting is right now.
00:07:47 I'm gonna turn the delay return
up a little bit just so we can kind of
really understand and hear what's
going on and then I'll turn it down.
00:08:19 Just a little bit of subtle delay,
different times on each side,
but it spreads it out.
00:08:25 And also, because the double vocal needs
to be in the middle with the lead vocal
so that you get a little bit of
that chorusing thickening FX
that stacking a vocal, like a unison vocal,
on top of another vocal will do.
00:08:37 But at the same time
I also want it to help
spread the feeling of the vocal out.
00:08:42 I don't want it to just
all be in the middle.
00:08:44 I'm putting a discrete delay on the
and different delay
on the double vocal
than it's on the lead vocal.
00:08:51 And I'm not clouding it with,
it's just kind of a delay that
happens on each side, spreads it out,
I'm not clouding it with more reverb.
00:08:59 I'm just looking
to widen out
the feel of the vocal
take it away from the very very center.
00:09:05 So some of the chorusing
sound that's happening is being
spread out and deferred
a little bit to the sides.
00:09:12 Then, the harmonies that's
where I'm gonna use a little bit of
reverb.
00:09:17 I'll turn a little bit of that on.
00:09:20 This is a Plate reverb,
it's on the C plate, it's set up very similar
to the way that I have the lead vocal.
00:09:26 It's set up having a
discrete reverb for them.
00:09:29 Discrete reverbs is
more of a modern sound.
00:09:32 A combined reverb sound is a bit older.
00:09:35 Because honestly,
studios maybe had one Plate
or one Chamber,
or one of some FX and they sent
the snare there,
maybe an instrument part,
the vocal, there's a lot of things.
00:09:48 And it's a different sound.
00:09:49 It's a little cloudier
and it's not specific
to one particular sound
and it's a little bit more
of a modern approach to have
discrete reverbs for everything.
00:09:59 Even though the setting is similar
the reverb will respond
differently if you have
just one thing happening in it
versus two things.
00:10:08 Just imagine yourself
in that bathroom example I used before
and if there's two people talking in there
the reverb of the space
is gonna sound different
and a little cloudier and
more confused sounding
than if it was just
related to one specific voice.
00:10:43 I wanna experiment with
just sending a little bit of delay
off the harmonies,
not as much of the double vocal.
00:10:51 I like the reverb,
it's adding just a little bit
more space and color.
00:10:56 I did really enjoy the power of the
harmonies dry around the lead vocal
when the lead vocal and the double
had all the FX.
00:11:03 So, I'm just kind of throwing some
stuff on here and seeing if I like it,
who knows,
maybe I'll just strip it all back.
00:11:09 So just give me a second and
then we can talk about it.
00:11:35 I definitely like having a little reverb,
the delay just kind of makes it too messy,
there's too much
information in terms of
flying around with the delay being
sent from the background vocals as well.
00:11:45 I just wanna mention,
right there,
when I was trying to critically listen
to something and not make as many pauses
to sort of talk about what I'm doing,
I turn the speakers up,
I wanna feel it a little bit more,
I changed my perspective,
I'll be bouncing back and forth between
Focals and the KRKs.
00:12:02 But it's important to,
as we discussed a little bit earlier,
to change the monitoring level
and I'll try and let you
know as we get a little further
into this and I start the automation
what I'm doing here
in terms of monitoring levels.
00:12:16 So, maybe you could fall along
and reflect the changes a little bit.
00:12:21 It might be important, again,
when we're doing...
00:12:25 going back and checking vocal level,
I'll kind of let you know.
00:12:28 Because we wanna do that at a low volume.
00:12:30 When I do my automation,
because I wanna feel
the power of the presentation
and I kind of wanna get into a performance,
I'm gonna turn it up and I wanna be,
I wanna feel more
involved in what's going on.
00:12:42 Most of my critical decision making
is at a low or moderate level.
00:12:46 I just wanted to share that with you.
00:13:18 Right there I was playing with
the sort of the gain structure
of how much level I was sending
into the background vocal reverb.
00:13:25 It was sounding a little too loud
so the first thing I did is
I turned down the sends.
00:13:29 The color of it didn't sound as nice.
00:13:32 So, I turned the return down a little bit,
and then turned the sends back up.
00:13:35 That's a perfect example right there
of what I was talking about before.
00:13:39 Because the color of the reverb
and the way it fills things out
really really matters.
00:13:43 You know, everybody is in the pool.
00:13:46 Hopefully, everybody has got sunscreen on.
00:13:48 I'm gonna just do a top to bottom listen
because I know there's
somethings I still really haven't
quite paid attention to
because I just been doing
bigger gestures and talking.
00:14:00 I'll check in on my mixbus and the
thing I've kind of been waiting to do
and get to and holding off on
is hopefully by
halfway, or three quarters
of the way through the song
I can start to play with the Sugar
plug-in, and that's on the Mixbus.
00:14:15 And then hopefully
pretty soon we'll be able
to get into doing the automation.
00:14:19 I'm not gonna sit here
and fiddle with every single sound until
I feel like everything
is sounding perfect
and hold off on doing automation.
00:14:27 Doing the automation
and interacting with
it a little bit differently
and getting involved
is gonna tell me somethings
that I might have overlooked.
00:14:35 And will tell me what's important
as opposed to just sitting here
sort of
microscopically looking at
each sort of instrument group
and so forth and so on.
00:14:43 I'm gonna have a long listen.
00:14:45 I'm gonna turn it up slightly.
00:17:56 I didn't get quite through
all the little things.
00:17:59 So, I'm gonna just keep
listening for a minute.
00:28:00 So I know I was doing a lot there.
00:28:02 I haven't really used the
Sugar plug-in extensively before.
00:28:05 It's doing a lot of great things.
00:28:07 We've got a lot of
excitement and stuff built-in.
00:28:10 It's definitely a good contributor
to my stereo mixbus.
00:28:12 Because I definitely
want to have it in there
but it's making me counterplay
where I maybe need to
make a few small changes.
00:28:19 That's why I changed the
ATR tape a little bit.
00:28:23 I was experimenting with
upper mid-range boost that's
going on with the Curve Bender.
00:28:28 I left the Curve Bender where it was.
00:28:31 The ATR, I made a different adjustment
to the Bias that we talked about before.
00:28:35 I just sort of backed
Sugar off a little bit.
00:28:38 Earlier, when I was listening,
before I went to Sugar,
I could hear
in the room mics that I hadn't EQd yet,
there was a little bit
of mid-tone on the snare
that I wanted to clear up a little bit.
00:28:51 I added a little bit of
EQ bump to the bass.
00:28:54 I need to pay attention
to the guitars a little bit,
I adjusted the vocal balance a little bit,
Sugar also affected
where the vocal presence is sitting.
00:29:04 The way I've got it set
I'm feeling good about
how it's accentuating the whole thing.
00:29:10 But it made my vocal feel
like it was popping out a little bit
more than I wanted it
to in the static balance.
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Award-winning Producer, Engineer, and Mixer, Jacquire King, has worked with some of the world’s most influential artists in every role you can imagine in a recording studio. From being an acclaimed recordist to mixing and producing multi-platinum records (9X in the case of Kings Of Leon) by superstars like Kaleo, Modest Mouse, Kings of Leon, Tom Waits, Norah Jones, Buddy Guy, Cold War Kids, MuteMath, Melissa Etheridge, and James Bay.
To date, Jacquire has received several awards for his meticulous attention to detail and unique approach to creating records that withstand the test of time.
His discography is well-known for the variety of music encompassed from the past 20 years. When you see Jacquire’s tutorials on pureMix, you will have the chance to sit next to a true master at work, who strives to enhance the artist's vision and serve the songs he helps deliver to the masses.
