A really useful tactic is to insert a compressor on any longer delay-type effects channels, and then feed this compressor's external side-chain input with a send from the dry lead vocal.
The Main Course
As is so often the case, the vocals were the main event in this song. Although, as with the other instruments I've described, the raw ingredients were in fundamentally good shape, I did have to do a bit of work to arrive at the finished result. There were a few things I felt needed to be addressed, and the first was some very minor pitch correction during the first two verses. This was quite tricky for me to get right, and I found myself just straightening the end of a few notes with Melodyne's Pitch Drift tool. It's really easy to overdo pitch correction when you're not using it as an obvious effect, but when I used it with appropriate subtlety, I was happy that I was improving things.
The other issue I spent a bit of time on was managing quite an aggressive bit of 'essing' in the 8kHz area. I was disappointed that I hadn't realised it was quite as fierce as this at the tracking stage, and I suspect that I may have been laying into the compression a bit too hard then – something that's easy to do if you like to record vocals through a bit of outboard. De-essing is a funny thing that can be one of the many rabbit holes we disappear down in the heat of a mix, but it's one of the jobs that has undoubtedly become easier to manage with modern technology — there are a number of plug-ins available that do an excellent job of helping you focus in and decide which area of a vocal to attenuate.
Some detailed automation helped control some harshness on the lead vocal that dedicated de-esser plug-ins seemed to struggle with.
In this mix, I found that despite having used two of the best tools in the business for this kind of processing (Soothe by Oeksound, and FabFilter's Pro-DS), it was all sounding a bit unsatisfactory. That 8kHz region is such a key part of singer Tony Jenkins' vocal tone that anything other than very moderate processing felt somewhat unnatural. Despite spending a period playing around with those plug-ins, I had to decide to let this one go to some extent. That said, I did find that some detailed level automation on any words that really stood out helped a great deal, and it's worth noting that I got the best results by focusing this automation before the small amount of plug-in compression I was using on the vocal.
It's so important to keep some perspective when mixing, especially with vocals, and I tried to remind myself that for most listeners it's not going to sound remotely unusual to have a vocal stick out a tiny bit around the 6-10 kHz region. The most important thing with de‑essing is for it not to be distracting — this can be a good point in a mix to take a break maybe and listen to a few bits of reference material to recalibrate your ears. Often all that's really needed is a small improvement before deciding to move on.
Spatial Awareness
After some profitably spent time riding volume levels throughout the mix — which mostly involved a few small upward adjustments during the chorus sections — the final stage was about managing my use of spatial effects throughout the mix. Along with the effects I'd captured during the recording stage (again, see box), the lead vocal seemed to happily take whatever I threw at it in terms of delay and reverb, using a fun little technique I pinched off my fellow Half-Ton Studios engineer Matty Moon: I used one auxiliary send to feed two or three different delays on separate aux channels. In this case, I had a slap, a quarter‑note and a much longer stereo delay. The idea is that you can then ride the level of the aux return channels at different points in the song.
Ducked delay: a compressor was used before the long delay effect, with the input 'keyed' by the lead vocal. This reduces the level of the delay lines when the voice is present, thus helping make lyrics more intelligible, but allows the effects to swell up more audibly after each line is finished.
Despite there being quite a generous helping of effects on the lead vocal now, it was important for the singer's diction to be clear and for the lyrics to be easily heard. A really useful tactic is to insert a compressor on any longer delay-type effects channels, and then feed this compressor's external side-chain input with a send from the dry lead vocal. This 'ducked delay' has the effect of reducing the level of the delay/reverb when the vocal is actually 'playing', but letting the effect level come back up in between words or phrases. It's not a new technique by any means, but it can be genuinely useful and is the type of thing you can easily build into your own mix template once you've figured out the routing.
Final Thoughts
It's probably atypical these days to mix with a control room full of people, but I can recall a number of sessions earlier on in my engineering career where I'd be sitting there sweating, acutely aware of watching eyes and listening ears, as I tried to figure out why a mix just wasn't coming together in front of an expectant band and a ticking clock. Being in such an environment forced me to learn enough about the essential tools and techniques of mixing that I became confident I could always mix my way out of trouble if needed. What I've tried to describe in this article is how important it is not to lose touch with these basics now that we have such a vast array of choices at our disposal. While there are plenty of clever and genuinely useful plug‑ins around, we often don't actually need to do much to craft a great mix: what we need to do most of all is listen and train our attention on what serves the song.
In the case of 'Martine', I used some very workmanlike processing to even out some performance issues and help knit the different elements of the mix together, and applied some creative techniques I've learned over the years. Yes, I took advantage of some wonderful new tools on occasion, to add character and a little experimentation to the process. But focusing on the bread-and-butter processes early on helped me quickly create a solid platform for the more fun, creative side of mixing later on. So if you feel a bit stale, or like your mixes have plateaued of late, then maybe try going back to basics — it might be just what you need to get the best out of your shiny new toys!
Audio Examples
You can hear a clip of the final mix along with a few other audio examples on the SOS website at: www.soundonsound.com/techniques/mix-rescue-new-fools-martine-audio. If you prefer to load them into your DAW of choice, you can download a ZIP file of hi‑res WAV audio examples located in the righthand Media sidebar or use the link below.
Download | 54 MB
Printing Effects When Recording
Some of the outboard gear I and other engineers at my studio like to experiment with at the recording stage. The Roland RE-201 Space Echo was used on the lead vocals in this month's track.I've mentioned at several points in the main article that I 'printed' (recorded) some analogue effects when tracking this song. In the days of tape-based recording, it wasn't at all unusual to commit to more fully formed sounds when tracking in this way, and there have been a few projects I've worked on recently where nearly all the effects are from the recording stage. While we seem to have plug-in alternatives for almost everything now, there's just something about recording outboard effects in real time that gives a particular sound that I find can be hard to recreate in the box; I feel it adds not only character but a bit individuality that can be increasingly hard to find these days. Quite why this approach works is hard to say, but I suspect it's a combination of the sound influencing the performance and simply committing to some creative decisions — and I know from my experiences on the other side of the glass just how important it is for an artist to feel excited about what they hear in the headphones.
So, while I'm recording, I'll often experiment with various stompboxes and a couple of spring reverb units we have at the studio. For the lead vocals on 'Maxine', I used a Roland RE-201 Space Echo, a lovely old tape-based delay and reverb unit, which I get in and out of my recording system via a Radial EXTC-500 re‑amping interface. (Space Echos are pretty pricey these days, though you could pick them up for about £200 only a decade ago!) I try to strike a sensible balance, though, and especially with a lead vocal I'll also be sure to capture a clean version too, either as a fallback for me, or because I know a track will be mixed by someone else. I tend to record through a mixing desk, so I'm able to set up effects on aux channels and then record these into my DAW on individual channels fairly easily, but it's easy enough to do with any but the most basic of multi‑channel audio interfaces — though you might need to delve into the manual and learn the routing software. Whether you feel it's worth the extra effort, I can't say — but the bottom line is that I really wouldn't go to all the bother if I didn't think it can sound good!