Pro tools mixing tips rap

It's all too easy to crank up the volume of your studio monitors when mixing, but be warned, loud monitors will do a lot of harm to you and your mixes.

Loud monitors will fatigue your ears and shorten your concentration span. Personally, I don't buy into the process of setting monitors to a specific loudness, instead, I use good old-fashioned common sense. Before I mix I listen to a track I completed previously that I like the sound of and I set my monitors to an appropriate level which enables me to hear buttons click on my outboard gear and control surface buttons that are placed around my mixing position.

Loud monitors can also cause problems with the soundscape. It's difficult to hear the results of compression at loud volumes, if you struggle to hear compressor attack and release times then I recommend you mix quietly as it is much easier to hear a compressor's behaviour at lower monitoring levels.

Another benefit of mixing at low levels is it will help you to mix in better punch and clarity. If a mix sounds big and powerful at low monitoring levels then imagine what it will sound like at loud levels. The reverse never works, if you mix loud and want a punchy mix then your ears will fool you into thinking you've achieved the desired effect Never forget that every single choice we make in a mix must be made, considered and confirmed with our ears, not our eyes.

It's easy to fall into a state commonly referred to as "mixing with our eyes" because plug-ins, meter and waveforms all look so pretty and colourful. Mixing with our eyes is as useful as listening to a Photoshop file What we see in Pro Tools as well as plug-ins UI do not truly inform us of whatever processes we apply to tracks in a mix.

Let's say you are compressing a lead vocal. The plug-in is showing 6dB of gain reduction. An online tutorial may have led you to believe that 6dB of GR is the right thing to do when compressing a lead vocal, so you trust your eyes with that meter reading and your brain informs your ears that 6dB of squash sounds good. What has happened here is an example of mixing with our eyes.

If you don't look at the gain reduction meter in a compressor and trust what your ears are telling you over eyes when setting threshold and ratio settings then there's a much higher chance of setting compression to sound more tasteful. You will most likely notice that you are only reducing the vocal by 3dB instead of 6dB and the vocal sounds perfect.

So you have just recorded your first song in Pro Tools, well done Mixing In Mono There are countless articles on the internet that make strong cases for mixing in mono. Check it out in the example below:. It can add even more of an interesting texture when you delay the left channel at a different rate than the right as heard in the audio example above.

To take it one step further, you could even add additional module effects to the delays in Nectar Pro to create a more unique sound.

Adding the Dimension module after the Delay module could give the echoes more width. You could also add some grit with the Saturation module or even create harmonies with the Harmony module.

Nectar Pro really is a vocal processing powerhouse that inspires some really creative sound design, so feel free to get pretty wild with it.

There is another cool special effect and it can be done with or without special plug-ins. If this is done in rhythm with the song, it can sound very cool. Check it out in action:. Copy and paste the small section before the original word.

By pasting it multiple times before the original word, you can create rhythmic patterns. The plug-in allows you to choose the timing value and rhythmic pattern or create your own custom stutter sequence. You can use it to glitch up drums, instruments, FX, or just about anything else! Please note: Stutter Edit is the only plug-in mentioned in this article that does not come with a Music Production Suite Pro membership.

No surprises here! The reverse effect achieves the sorcerous result of playing audio backwards. I personally find this is best applied to a low-volume layered vocal, reverb, or drum hits in intros, breakdowns, bridges, and outros. Select a word, phrase, or instrument part and reverse it! When applied to drum and cymbal hits or reverb, the reverse effect gives you a dramatic swell—it starts quiet, then fades into a loud and abrupt end.

This effect works best to help transition between sections of your track, but can be used anywhere you want to build tension and hype.

Reversing drums, vocals, and other instruments can definitely add some unique sonic flavors to any hip-hop mix. Parallel compression allows you to get the best of both worlds because you get the punchy, in-your-face sound that the compressor gives, while still keeping the transients and dynamics of the original audio.

When mixing hip-hop and rap, I recommend using parallel compression on drums to make sure they really pack a punch. But you can also use it on vocals or other instruments to help them pop in your mix.

Simply apply compression with one of the two Compressor modules in Neutron Pro and then drag the Mix slider down for the module to blend back in the original audio. Using this technique can really help elements stand out in your mix, just be careful to avoid these parallel compression mistakes.

Hopefully these tips will help you level up and bring some fresh ideas to your next rap or hip-hop mixing session. Again, all the plug-ins mentioned in this article with the exception of Stutter Edit 2 come with a Music Production Suite Pro membership. Learn how to mix rap vocals, using the track "Profound" by Kyle Bent. Learn how to unmask the lead vocal from sources that get in the way of intelligibility. The beat is the basis of rhythm and momentum in contemporary music.

The options for processing modern vocals are endless. The most common mistake people make when processing vocals for Hip-Hop is over-compressing. High levels of compression is really only beneficial to a mix when there is a lot of stuff fighting for sonic space.

Carefully picking what to get rid of to help the vocals along is very important. For example, most engineers high-pass filter almost everything except the kick and bass. That clears up room for the low information. But often the importance of low-pass filtering is overlooked. The human voice, male and female, has chest resonance that goes down to 80 Hz and even under sometimes. Deciding where the vocal lives frequency-wise is important.

This in turn exaggerates the chest sound and head sound — particularly the sounds that form at the front of the mouth, tongue, and teeth — these are the tones that we use to pronounce our words and generally live in the upper midrange 2k-5k, no numbers, listen listen listen.

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