How to Mix Vocals Like a Pro (9 Steps)

The key to mixing vocals is a balance of technicality and creativity. A well-mixed vocal can substantially enhance a song, capturing the listener’s attention and conveying emotion with clarity and impact.

In this guide, we’ll explore nine essential steps to mixing vocals, covering everything from stem preparation to the application of effects. Whether you’re an advanced producer or a beginner, mastering these techniques will help you achieve professional-quality vocal mixes that shine in any track. Let’s dive in and unlock the secrets of mixing vocals like a pro.

Before mixing, it’s crucial to properly prepare your vocal stems. Start with comping, which involves selecting the best parts from multiple takes to create a flawless performance. This ensures you have the highest quality vocals to work with.

Next, remove background noise and clicks using noise reduction tools and manually eliminating any unwanted sounds. This step ensures a clean and professional audio track.

 Time alignment is also essential. Adjust the timing of the vocal stems so they are perfectly in sync with each other and the instrumental track. This gives a much more professional sound and ensures all vocal stems feel like one seamless track.

Finally, keep breaths in the recording. Breaths add a natural and human element to the performance. Instead of removing them, lower their volume if they are too prominent. This approach maintains the natural feel without being distracting.

By meticulously preparing your vocal stems, you’ll lay a solid foundation for a professional-sounding mix.

Compression is essential for achieving a polished vocal mix. It works by reducing the dynamic range of the vocal, smoothing out the volume levels. This results in a more consistent and appealing sound. By taming peaks and raising quieter parts, compression ensures that every word and nuance of the vocal performance is audible and balanced within the mix. Properly applied compression makes the vocal sit more comfortably in the track, providing a professional and cohesive sound.

When setting up your compressor, pay attention to the attack and release settings. For vocals, it’s generally best to use a fast attack time, around 1ms, to quickly catch and control any sudden peaks. A slower release time, around 200ms, helps maintain a natural and smooth sound as the compressor gradually eases off. These settings help ensure that the vocal remains dynamic and expressive while still being controlled and consistent throughout the performance.

Tuning ensures the pitch of the vocal is on point, providing a professional and polished sound. You can use a manual tuner like Melodyne or an autotuner like Waves Tune Real-Time to correct any inconsistencies in pitch. To achieve the best results, compress the vocal before tuning. This compression helps the tuner identify the correct notes more easily by creating a more consistent vocal level, leading to more accurate pitch correction. Proper tuning enhances the overall quality of the vocal, ensuring it fits seamlessly with the rest of the track.

De-essing is crucial for taming harsh sibilant sounds, like “s,” “sh,” and “ch,” which can become piercing and distracting in a mix. These high-frequency sounds can be unpleasant and distracting. A de-esser works by targeting these specific frequencies and reducing their loudness, resulting in a smoother and more pleasant vocal sound.

When using a de-esser, it’s important to set the threshold and frequency range. Start by identifying the problematic sibilant frequencies, usually between 5kHz and 10kHz. Then, adjust the threshold to reduce these frequencies without affecting the rest of the vocal. Proper de-essing enhances clarity and ensures the vocal remains clear and intelligible without being harsh or piercing.

Saturation is a powerful tool for enhancing vocals. It introduces a very subtle level of “crunch” to the vocal, which is quite pleasing to the ears and can make the vocal sound more engaging.

Saturation adds harmonics to the vocal, enriching its harmonic content. This makes the vocal sound thicker and fuller, giving it more presence in the mix. By carefully applying saturation, you can enhance the natural tone of the vocal, making it stand out more effectively without overwhelming other elements in the track.

EQing is vital for shaping the vocal’s tone and ensuring it sits well in the mix. Adding brightness to the vocal by boosting frequencies 5kHz and up enhances clarity and presence, making the vocal stand out. This boost can add sparkle and definition, helping the vocal cut through the mix without sounding harsh.

Equally important is removing low-end rumble, typically below 100Hz. These low frequencies can muddy the mix and compete with other elements like bass and kick drums. By using a high-pass filter to eliminate these unwanted frequencies, you ensure the vocal remains clean and focused. Proper EQing enhances the vocal’s natural character, making it sound polished and professional.

Using a second compressor is a common technique to achieve a more controlled and polished vocal sound. Compressing the vocal in two separate stages ensures that no single compressor has to work too hard, resulting in a smoother and more natural compression.

The first compressor typically handles the larger peaks and dynamic range, ensuring that the vocal is consistently audible. The second compressor can then apply more subtle, gentle compression to further smooth out the performance and add a final layer of control. This dual-stage approach allows for more precise and transparent compression, maintaining the vocal’s dynamics and expressiveness while ensuring it sits perfectly in the mix.

Some engineers even use three separate compressors in their vocal chain, although we have found two do the job well.

Introducing delay to the vocal adds depth and dimension, enhancing its presence in the mix. A common technique to ensure that the delay doesn’t clutter the vocal is to sidechain the delay signal to the vocal itself. This means that the delay effect ducks in volume whenever the vocal is singing, creating a cleaner and more intelligible sound.

Sidechaining the delay to the vocal allows the vocal to remain prominent while still benefiting from the spaciousness provided by the delay effect. The delay tail fills in the gaps between vocal phrases, adding a sense of continuity and space without overpowering the main vocal performance. This technique ensures that the delay complements the vocal without overshadowing it, resulting in a more cohesive and polished mix.

Reverb adds depth and atmosphere to the vocal, giving it a sense of space and dimension within the mix. To prevent the reverb from overwhelming the vocal, it’s beneficial to sidechain the reverb signal to the main vocal.

By sidechaining the reverb to the vocal, the reverb’s volume is automatically reduced whenever the vocal is singing, allowing the vocal to remain clear and prominent in the mix. This technique ensures that the reverb enhances the vocal without clouding its clarity or muddying the mix.

It’s essential to set up the reverb on a send channel, allowing you to control the amount of reverb applied to the vocal independently. Additionally, EQing the reverb send channel to remove low-mid frequencies helps prevent the reverb from adding unnecessary muddiness to the vocal. By cutting out these frequencies, the reverb enhances the vocal’s spaciousness while keeping it clean and silky smooth.

Mixing vocals like a pro involves meticulous preparation, precise processing, and thoughtful application of effects. By carefully comping, cleaning, and aligning vocal stems, then applying compression, tuning, EQ, and effects like delay and reverb with strategic sidechaining, you can achieve a polished and professional vocal sound that enhances the overall quality of your mix. With attention to detail and a focus on enhancing the natural qualities of the vocal, you can create mixes that captivate listeners and elevate your music to the next level.