These audio files accompany my Mixing Pop Vocals workshop in SOS November 2025. The song featured in these examples is 'April Blues', by the artist Moni Blue: www.instagram.com/monibluemusic
www.soundonsound.com/techniques/mixing-pop-vocals
pvmt_01_Raw
Here is a section of Moni's raw vocal recording, captured on a Neumann TLM103 microphone in a small home studio.
pvmt_02_Gullfoss
As a first processing step, I ran Moni's raw vocal through Sound Theory Gullfoss mastering processor, with the Recover parameter set to 35 percent and the Tame parameter set to 23 percent. As you can hear, this made the tone a little clearer, but the real benefit of this processing was that it made the vocal tone more consistent.
pvmt_03_FixesOut
This is Moni's vocal after my tuning and timing tweaks were complete. By processing with carefully targeted pitch offsets and simple audio edits, I was able to avoid any audible correction side-effects, but I was still left with some prominent plosives and mouth noises.
pvmt_04_FixesIn
In this example, you can hear how I removed the plosives from Moni's vocal recording using region-specific EQ (high-pass filtering at 12dB/octave at 80Hz) and also removed the most obtrusive mouth noises with simple audio edits.
pvmt_05_ExtremesControlOut
I've now compressed and brightened Moni's vocal, but you can hear that the low and high extremes of the vocal frequency spectrum are still a little inconsistent, partly on account of her natural movements while performing in front of the mic.
pvmt_06_ExtremesControlIn
To reduce the inconsistencies heard at the spectral extremes of the pvmt_05_ExtremesControlOut audio file, I applied 3:1 compression below 300Hz (with a 15ms Attack and 45ms Release) and 2:1 compression above 5kHz (with a 0ms Attack and 1ms Release).
pvmt_07_AutomatedEffects_VocalSolo
Here's a longer section of the final lead vocal from my mix of 'April Blues', which I've soloed to more clearly highlight the amount of variation happening with the vocal effects. You can hear how the fairly restrained background reverb in the verse becomes longer and more prominent for the prechorus, but that the chorus then introduces a much more widescreen double-tracked texture with prominent delay and modulation effects. There are also several moments when the effects texture changes abruptly to subliminally demand the listener's attention, for instance the sudden reverb stop after "I'm alright" and the reverbless "any more" before the prechorus.
pvmt_08_AutomatedEffects_MixContext
Now let's listen to the same section of vocal you heard isolated in the pvmt_07_AutomatedEffects_VocalSolo file, but within the context of the full final mix. If you'd like to hear the whole mix and check out more of Moni's music, head over to www.instagram.com/monibluemusic