Cut a bit off the lows and boost the mids a little in the vocals, its quite a laid back style you have so you may want to mess with a limiter or compressor on you vocal too (avoid the built ins in BM3 though, they are not great yet)
Hopefully that will give you a bit more cut through the mix, your vocals are getting a bit washed out by the backing track.
With your style you may find that double or triple tracking the vocal may give you a bit more depth to work with in the mix, its worth trying overdrive or saturation too, but be very very gentle with it, you want to add a bit of bite, not full on distort.
Also i am feeling (could be wrong here) that your monitoring while recording your rapping is not great and it sounds to me like there is another 25% to your performance (at least) when you have better monitoring (which tends to lead to much more confidence)
(Think cheap ass little mixing desk and cheap ass reverb, just for your headphones)
Anyway take all that with a pinch of salt, im an old fart and my HipHop tunes are from a different century lol
@5pinlink said:
Cut a bit off the lows and boost the mids a little in the vocals, its quite a laid back style you have so you may want to mess with a limiter or compressor on you vocal too (avoid the built ins in BM3 though, they are not great yet)
Hopefully that will give you a bit more cut through the mix, your vocals are getting a bit washed out by the backing track.
With your style you may find that double or triple tracking the vocal may give you a bit more depth to work with in the mix, its worth trying overdrive or saturation too, but be very very gentle with it, you want to add a bit of bite, not full on distort.
Also i am feeling (could be wrong here) that your monitoring while recording your rapping is not great and it sounds to me like there is another 25% to your performance (at least) when you have better monitoring (which tends to lead to much more confidence)
(Think cheap ass little mixing desk and cheap ass reverb, just for your headphones)
Anyway take all that with a pinch of salt, im an old fart and my HipHop tunes are from a different century lol
Lol hey priciate the feedback man! I'm learning, so everything is helpful.
Just a couple of my tips when first learning, these helped me alot:
Always EQ everything if you can to make sure you dont have mud in the mix. For just starting with eqing in BM3 add a 6 band eq to your vocal, choose 1st band, set the filter type to High Pass, roll the cutoff all the way to 16hz. Solo your vocal track and loop a small part and slowly raise the cutoff until you notice a difference in lows. This allows you to learn how your vocal range is going to sit in a mix and where in the low frequently spectrum. Remember subwoofers common crossover point is usually 130hz. This is usually where I start to begin my cutoff unless the vocals are meant to be bassy. The reso should be rolled all the way down and moved up to taste. If you wish to have the reso flat (many do) set the reso to .30-.35.
When you've done all this save EQ settings as your own personal vocal preset so you can load this and so you can tweak the other bands 2-6 later for other frequencies such as your mids, highs, and others.
Learn vocal compression techniques. They can be extremely daunting at first as they were for me. You have a single Dynamics compressor in BeatMaker 3. As @5pinlink said, it may not be the best compressor but is highly suggested you learn this one before getting another. No plugin is created equal but they all do the job. Best way to learn any of these is with extreme settings, soloing certain tracks, watching the mix meters and dialing down from the highest settings. So for a first time using these and rap vocals I suggest trying a few things. Try to compress after the EQ in this case (of course you can experiment though and try it elsewhere and please do). Solo your vocal track and overkill the threshold to something like -24. Set a ratio somewhere from 2:1 - 6.1 (a higher ratio will allow you to truly hear and see what the compressor is doing, but you don't want this so remember to dial down. Then play with attack and release to hear how it effects the track. Don't go too low on attack but start low and move it up. Release try starting extremely high and roll it down until you like it. Maybe 20-40ms
Also as @5pinlink said, try triple tracking and spreading your 3 vocal tracks along the stereo field. Maybe one hard panned left, one hard right. One center. Then dial the far panned ones in to taste.
One of your instruments might be conflicting with the frequency of your voice. Try to find it using solo on your vocal track and each instrument. Then EQ that instrument or use sidechain compression to duck that instrument for your vocals.
Save presets often. They may work on your other tracks.
As for bass, I've typed too much but definitely convert the bass to mono. All sound systems will love you. Won't give anything on bass right now. Go make music! Sorry this was so long.
These are just random things to try and may not even be "right" by some producers. There is more than one way to learn and do these things. And in my opinion, in music it's all about having fun.
@mefisme said:
Just a couple of my tips when first learning, these helped me alot:
Always EQ everything if you can to make sure you dont have mud in the mix. For just starting with eqing in BM3 add a 6 band eq to your vocal, choose 1st band, set the filter type to High Pass, roll the cutoff all the way to 16hz. Solo your vocal track and loop a small part and slowly raise the cutoff until you notice a difference in lows. This allows you to learn how your vocal range is going to sit in a mix and where in the low frequently spectrum. Remember subwoofers common crossover point is usually 130hz. This is usually where I start to begin my cutoff unless the vocals are meant to be bassy. The reso should be rolled all the way down and moved up to taste. If you wish to have the reso flat (many do) set the reso to .30-.35.
When you've done all this save EQ settings as your own personal vocal preset so you can load this and so you can tweak the other bands 2-6 later for other frequencies such as your mids, highs, and others.
Learn vocal compression techniques. They can be extremely daunting at first as they were for me. You have a single Dynamics compressor in BeatMaker 3. As @5pinlink said, it may not be the best compressor but is highly suggested you learn this one before getting another. No plugin is created equal but they all do the job. Best way to learn any of these is with extreme settings, soloing certain tracks, watching the mix meters and dialing down from the highest settings. So for a first time using these and rap vocals I suggest trying a few things. Try to compress after the EQ in this case (of course you can experiment though and try it elsewhere and please do). Solo your vocal track and overkill the threshold to something like -24. Set a ratio somewhere from 2:1 - 6.1 (a higher ratio will allow you to truly hear and see what the compressor is doing, but you don't want this so remember to dial down. Then play with attack and release to hear how it effects the track. Don't go too low on attack but start low and move it up. Release try starting extremely high and roll it down until you like it. Maybe 20-40ms
Also as @5pinlink said, try triple tracking and spreading your 3 vocal tracks along the stereo field. Maybe one hard panned left, one hard right. One center. Then dial the far panned ones in to taste.
One of your instruments might be conflicting with the frequency of your voice. Try to find it using solo on your vocal track and each instrument. Then EQ that instrument or use sidechain compression to duck that instrument for your vocals.
Save presets often. They may work on your other tracks.
As for bass, I've typed too much but definitely convert the bass to mono. All sound systems will love you. Won't give anything on bass right now. Go make music! Sorry this was so long.
Thank you for the tips man! Helps a lot and yeah you're right it's all about having fun!
Comments
Cut a bit off the lows and boost the mids a little in the vocals, its quite a laid back style you have so you may want to mess with a limiter or compressor on you vocal too (avoid the built ins in BM3 though, they are not great yet)
Hopefully that will give you a bit more cut through the mix, your vocals are getting a bit washed out by the backing track.
With your style you may find that double or triple tracking the vocal may give you a bit more depth to work with in the mix, its worth trying overdrive or saturation too, but be very very gentle with it, you want to add a bit of bite, not full on distort.
Also i am feeling (could be wrong here) that your monitoring while recording your rapping is not great and it sounds to me like there is another 25% to your performance (at least) when you have better monitoring (which tends to lead to much more confidence)
(Think cheap ass little mixing desk and cheap ass reverb, just for your headphones)
Anyway take all that with a pinch of salt, im an old fart and my HipHop tunes are from a different century lol
Lol hey priciate the feedback man! I'm learning, so everything is helpful.
Just a couple of my tips when first learning, these helped me alot:
Always EQ everything if you can to make sure you dont have mud in the mix. For just starting with eqing in BM3 add a 6 band eq to your vocal, choose 1st band, set the filter type to High Pass, roll the cutoff all the way to 16hz. Solo your vocal track and loop a small part and slowly raise the cutoff until you notice a difference in lows. This allows you to learn how your vocal range is going to sit in a mix and where in the low frequently spectrum. Remember subwoofers common crossover point is usually 130hz. This is usually where I start to begin my cutoff unless the vocals are meant to be bassy. The reso should be rolled all the way down and moved up to taste. If you wish to have the reso flat (many do) set the reso to .30-.35.
When you've done all this save EQ settings as your own personal vocal preset so you can load this and so you can tweak the other bands 2-6 later for other frequencies such as your mids, highs, and others.
Learn vocal compression techniques. They can be extremely daunting at first as they were for me. You have a single Dynamics compressor in BeatMaker 3. As @5pinlink said, it may not be the best compressor but is highly suggested you learn this one before getting another. No plugin is created equal but they all do the job. Best way to learn any of these is with extreme settings, soloing certain tracks, watching the mix meters and dialing down from the highest settings. So for a first time using these and rap vocals I suggest trying a few things. Try to compress after the EQ in this case (of course you can experiment though and try it elsewhere and please do). Solo your vocal track and overkill the threshold to something like -24. Set a ratio somewhere from 2:1 - 6.1 (a higher ratio will allow you to truly hear and see what the compressor is doing, but you don't want this so remember to dial down. Then play with attack and release to hear how it effects the track. Don't go too low on attack but start low and move it up. Release try starting extremely high and roll it down until you like it. Maybe 20-40ms
Also as @5pinlink said, try triple tracking and spreading your 3 vocal tracks along the stereo field. Maybe one hard panned left, one hard right. One center. Then dial the far panned ones in to taste.
One of your instruments might be conflicting with the frequency of your voice. Try to find it using solo on your vocal track and each instrument. Then EQ that instrument or use sidechain compression to duck that instrument for your vocals.
Save presets often. They may work on your other tracks.
As for bass, I've typed too much but definitely convert the bass to mono. All sound systems will love you. Won't give anything on bass right now. Go make music! Sorry this was so long.
These are just random things to try and may not even be "right" by some producers. There is more than one way to learn and do these things. And in my opinion, in music it's all about having fun.
Thank you for the tips man! Helps a lot and yeah you're right it's all about having fun!