Welcome to Sage Audio. Today we’re looking at How to Mix Background Vocals. To get the
most from your music, watch the entirety of each chapter for a complete understanding
of the topic. But first, If you have a mix that you need mastered, send it to us to receive
a free mastered sample of it with the link in the description.
Aggressive Smooth Compression
For this video, I’m going to introduce the processing, step-by-step or as a chain, but
feel free to pick and choose which tips you use when mixing.
I’m going to start with substantial optical compression to smooth the dynamics of my vocal
and make them denser later on. Although an over-compressed sound doesn’t work well
on the lead, on BGVs, it really doesn’t have a negative effect, since they we recorded
to be blended in.
The more dynamic they the more they’ll stick out and cause issues, so I’ll get about
8dB of compression, and set a longer release, then oversample by 2x.
Introduce Hi-pass and Sibilance Dip
Depending on the BGV you may or may not want your fundamental, so create a high-pass filter
and move it up to about 200Hz, or a little lower if you want the BGV to be more prominent
in the mix. I’ll also attenuate the sibilance frequencies, so about 6 to 10kHz.
You may also want to pull back on 500Hz to make the BGV sit back in
the mix.
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Tune and Double
Similar to aggressive compression, we can tune BGVs more without it being noticeable
to the listener, so I’ll tune the BGVs with maximum settings. This also lets you reduce
the amount of tuning on the lead since the support will be in more in tune..
Metatune also lets me double this tuned vocal, so I’ll do this now to avoid using an additional
processor, and to further blend these BGVs in.
De-ess Heavily
If you’re in control of the recording process for your BGVs, try to hold back on additional
sibilants, since more than what’s already present in the lead vocal isn’t needed.
If you’re only mixing, then use heavy de-essing to reduce the sibilants as much as possible.
If this isn’t working, you can always use clip gain to manually reduce the volume of
the sibilance.
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Re-time but Don’t Make Perfect
Now that I have some processing on the BGVs that control the tune, and dynamics, I’ll
take a listen to see if anything sounds out of place. I’ll then cut any section that
needs to be retimed and try to make it coincide with the lead vocal.
Just be sure not to edit them too closely to the lead, since subtle time differences
will cause a fuller sound.
Slapback or Thick Reverb
Following the idea that I want my BGVs to be dense, I’m going to introduce subtle
short reverb to concentrate a lot of reflections. A slap-back reverb or delay might also work
well here for the same reason - but it’ll have a slightly different sound when blended
in.
Try multiple options until you find a short time-based effect that works well for this
purpose.
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Introduce Binaural or Stereo Panning
For any BGVs I doubled with the Metatune plugin, I’ll use regular panning to push the signal
into one side or the other - but for the ones I didn’t double, I might use binaural panning
to add an extra dimension and depth to the BGV.
This gives you a lot more options when trying to find the right stereo placement and blend
in the vocal.
Bus Process all BGVs
After I’ve added all of my processing to my individual tracks, I’m going to change
the output of these tracks from the stereo output to a bus. Then I’ll collectively
process all of my BGVs using this bus, on which I’ll add a little more compression,
and maybe some eq.
This way the BGVs have a collected and uniform sound, but you still have the option to tweak
any individual track as needed.
If you have a mix that you need mastered, send it to us to receive a free mastered sample
of it with the link in the description. Thank you so much for watching.