Staying Active During Vocal Sessions
Often times, artists release unmixed and unmastered roughs from recording sessions. While this is sometimes not the best, it makes it even more important to get the best rough mix possible by the end of your session. Sometimes, sessions don’t allow for you to dive deep into freaking your mix, but that is still no excuse to not do your best with the time you have. I say this because there have been many times when I see engineers that are starting out only press record and then glance at their phone the rest of their session. There are so many missed opportunities for getting your session right. If you are tracking vocals and there is even the slightest downtime in a session, I’d recommend doing a mix of the following things to start polishing off your recording.
De-breathing
Go through your vocal takes and listen for any breaths that poke out. I don’t remove breaths completely but I do some clip gaining so that there is more balance. Sometimes an artist is punching in n out of takes and the breathes might also sound unnatural.
De-essing
Similar to my process of de-breathing the vocal takes, I also recommend doing some de-essing. I won’t say go crazy with the editing during the recording session, but I would listen for the harshest culprits and bring those down in level.
Fades
Messy comps can be very distracting. When putting together different vocal takes, blend them as best as possible with fade ins/outs and leveling (more on that below). The style of “punching in” takes demands that takes be faded together as smoothly as possible.
Leveling
Artists tend to move around while recording whether from excitement or emotion. You’ll be able to hear these movements with drops or jumps in levels. You can also visibly see certain waveforms be smaller or larger than the rest of your takes. I would suggest evening it out so that everything is a smooth listen.
These are just a few things I do without even thinking while in recording sessions. It helps to be attentive during all points of recordings sessions, not just while recording. It’s so amazing when an artist comes back from a break and you already started adding sauce. This will make them want to hire you for a mix so try not to do the bare minimum and just press 3.
