Hey, check out this thing I made with Adobe Flex. I mean, who doesn’t love a hot blond chick in a desert canyon? Move the bottom slider and observe some mad coding skilz.
Cheeseball image, I know, but in its original state it comes darn close to how I picture a good mix. It’s how the photographer meant it to be. The girl draws you in simply because she is the human connection and gives you a reference point for the grandeur of the environment.
My dentist is a super cool old guy that goes to our church. He LOVES to talk to me about the mix, especially about the vocals, while drilling my teeth. A little awkward, yes. On my last visit he asked, “So, you don’t want to make it sound like American Idol?” I had to think long on that. You’d look like a complete idiot saying that the mix on American Idol sucks. It is the perfect Karaoke mix after all. I just can’t stand the thought of the guitars sounding like an afterthought; especially in worship.
The human voice is what draws you in. Most of the music I like has the voice tucked back a bit but still clear and intelligible. It makes me feel like I’m entering a room. (Or a canyon with a hot blond.) The snare is the front door and the high-hat the door knob. Once you’re inside you have stereo guitars building the walls, keyboard textures filling the air, the bass and kick a solid floor… you get the picture. You don’t have to sacrifice intelligibility to get those results.
Here are a few things we do to try to get a full mix around a clear vocal. I’m assuming a full band with drums, bass, two electrics, one acoustic and keys.
Mic Selection
Mics like the Shure KSM9 or Nuemann KMS 104/105 give you that fresh clean studio sound. They’ll clean up a lead vocal in a jiffy.
High Pass
You can’t tuck the vocal back into the Room of Rock if it’s big and boomy. It’s all about balance. We’ll high pass a vocal as high as 400Hz when it needs it. A paper-thin vocal isn’t a bad thing when you have keyboard pads and thick guitar textures. Take a listen to one of my favorite albums of all time, Long Gone Before Daylight (opens iTunes), and hear what a paper-thin vocal can give you. You should already own that record, by the way.
If we have a stripped down band we’ll fatten up the vocal to balance it out.
Mix in Stereo
I don’t subscribe philosophy of being fair to the whole room by mixing in dual-mono. You can be creative with your balance without sinking to the lowest common denominator. We run the texture electric guitar in stereo (preferably dual amp) with a 20 millesecond delay between left and right. We’ll put the lead electric in the middle or sometimes (very) slightly offset with the acoustic guitar. Panning the keyboards will open up room in the middle. And pan those toms! All of this opens up phsycoacoustic space in the middle for that vocal.
Aspire to Inspire Air Guitar Motions
I always said my goal was to get someone to air-guitar during worship. A couple years ago during a passionately intense musical moment I let the electric guitars rise slowly till they completely overtook the vocals. A guy next to the sound booth had both arms raised high and toward the end of the guitar rise, his right hand came down in a swooping motion and his left hand clenched an invisible neck. Two words: I win.
So, these are just my opinions. I’d love to hear what you all think about vocal placement especially in regards to live worship.
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can you make it to where if I keep moving the slider to the right she actually comes OUT of the screen?
Sam… you are so cool it’s ridiculous.
Sam, this is what amazes me: I don’t know half of what you’re talking about, yet I love reading this blog. The true mark of talent my friend!
@Keith – believe me bro. i tried.
@Clay – thanks man! stop by the booth tonight to pick up that 5 bucks I said I’d pay you.
:)
I used to give Danny Brown (YWAM Bangkok) a hard time for eating two of our meager eight mixer channels for his 01W (“Your stereo image,” I chided.) Maybe I was wrong…
BTW, thanks for your kind words about my cartoon. I sent it to Clapton, Nathan East, – the Cats – and you’re the 1st to stamp approval.
I’d better start writing better. You’re beating me up!
“I Win”
I laughed out loud. Why? Because it’s exactly how you feel. And that is hilarious.
Just found your blog…great stuff!
Just curious, when you pan that dual-amp’d electric, do you hard pan?
Hi Steven,
Personally, yes, I like to hard pan the texture guitar especially if there are two mics involved but often times we split one mic on one amp across two channels. More plain vanilla but more consistent too.
It’s worth noting that time alignment is an issue whenever two mics (especially on two amps) are involved and it can be tricky to get them lined up. Without corrected time alignment, two amps summed mono can put the guitar in a tin can. In my experience, it still affects the sound panned hard left and right with even a 20ms delay on one channel. Don’t know why. Sometimes flipping the phase on one channel strip will get you close enough.