Mixing Pop Vocals

-Mixing Vocals for Pop Music - Tony Maserati Tips

Here's a few tips about vocal mixing for a pop song that Tony Maserati shared during his guest appearance on gearslutz. Some of the kit on here is expensive outboard gear, I do however, think his process is interesting to know, this is of course just one example.

Stage 1 - Subtractive EQ

-Subtractive eq on the tones I don't like or make it harder to fit in the mix anywhere from 180hz-600hz

-Notch out the things that bothter you and work from there

Stage 2 - Sweetening

-Send it through an outboard sweetening box like an LA3a or Chandler TG1

-All the while, I'm playing the song and mixing other elements in

LA3a

Chandler TG1

Stage 3 - Fine Tuning EQ

-At that point I may add a Neve EQ or a GML8200 to 'fine tune' my placement 'tonaly' of the vocal

Neve EQ

GML8200

Stage 4 - Separation
-If the vocal performance is 'separated' into different energies i.e. soft verse, hard shrill chorus; I'll split the track into pieces so I can eq and compress them differently as I've mentioned on the waves video

Stage 5 - Delay / Reverb

-Usually some quarter note delay that then is sent to a small room (reverb)

-I'd add a bit of small room direct from the lead as well as possibly some nonLin verb but really depends on the song

-On the louder parts I'd prob 'ride' in some plate reverb and more delay depending if we wanted it to sound 'fancy' or intimate

Stage 6 - End of the Chain

On a pop song, the perceved level of the vocals must be a constant 'in yer face' thing Lately, I've been messing with Waves L3 MultiMax on the end of my chain for a lead vocal. Sometimes just on the verse, but really it depends on the song and audience I'm after. I use the distressors quite a lot as well.

Waves L3