Mixing and mastering HipHop

[UnJust]

Bit of a strange question here but I’ve been sat in front of my DAW for ages playing around and can’t really seem to quite grasp it

I would like to know how earl sweatshirts producers create a really dirty sounding vocal whilst maintaining the crisp to it and sitting perfect in the mix

Some good track examples of this would be “woah” and “hive”

Am I right in thinking it’s just a good blend of distortion or am I missing something entirely that I need to research

I know it isn’t possible to replicate something entirely in a DAW but it’s definitely a mixing example I would love to understand more about

[Martin Walker]

Hi Unjust, and welcome to the SOS Forums!

I've just approved your first post here, and expect someone will be along very shortly with some replies for you.

However, even before that I should recommend that listen out for our very own Zukan (Eddie Bazil), who is a local expert on hiphop and EDM genres. He also has loads of tutorials (including plenty of free ones) on all aspects of hiphop including vocals, so it could be worth you paying a visit to his website at http://www.samplecraze.com as well.

Oh, and it might be useful if you posted a link to these particular tracks you're interested in exploring vocal-wise

Martin

[UnJust]

Thank you for the advice , here is the links to the tracks :

https://youtu.be/anRkutaPS9w

https://youtu.be/0FcDXL5Aw0o

[mammy]

these are the best man. Use them.

https://www.slatedigital.com/cameron-cartee/ -CAMERON CARTEE HIP-HOP MIXING

https://www.slatedigital.com/just-blaze/ -HIP-HOP PRODUCTION MASTERCLASS

[UnJust]

No those courses do not answer my question , I have already taken both of them , I’ve had slate digital for ages , I’m clearly not asking for a mixing masterclass , it’s just a question that someone who has done something similar can answer for me

[James Perrett]

I had a very quick listen to bits of those videos and, as far as I can tell, it is a combination of mic and voice with no magic processing. There is certainly a bit of a zing to the voice but this could just created by choosing a mic with that sound - I have an old VTL CR3A that does it and I seem to remember that the Rode NT2 was similar. Plenty of other budget Chinese large diaphragm mics would also probably do the same thing. Another way to create a similar sound would be to use an aural exciter - there's a good one built in to Reaper that works in a similar way to the Aphex hardware.

The most important thing is to start with a great performance with not too much room sound - there seems to be a little room sound on those tracks but I don't know whether it would have been on the original recordings or added afterwards.

I noticed the odd section that had what sounded like pitch shifted vocals mixed in with the original just to create a bit of emphasis too.

[Drew Stephenson]

Hmmm. Really not my genre (Zukan might make some suggestions if he sees the thread) but if I was aiming for that kind of sound I'd be starting by close micing with a fairly bright mic and compressing it with something with a bit of character and adding a bit of distortion - which is probably exactly what you've done...
The other thing that stands out from the links above is how the mix/production gives the vocals so much space. A lot of the vocal clarity comes from the fact that there's very little else happening in the centre of the mix in that frequency range.
But you've probably noticed that too...
Hopefully someone will be along shortly with a bit more experience.

[EDIT - James has just beaten me to it.]

[CameronCartee]

Saturation bro. I love soft tube they have a free one knob very simple and musical. Saturn is also a beautiful saturation plug in with blending options. Also you can set up an aux with a sans amp or something similar and send the vocal to it pre-fadep. Blend it but keep it low, you just barely want to notice it. that will add some grit and such though the mix.

[Zukan]

I use a combination of distortion and bandpass filtering to get that nice upfront dirty spit. My weapon of choice is Soundtoys Decapitator and I often run this through, via a send/return, to Inphonik's PCM2612 for some crushed grit. I then 'bounce' (swell) this with a compressor.

Basically, you need to think in terms of distortion and filtering to achieve the nice and grimy texture.

This is one approach although there are many ways to skin this.