Getting the B.U. Vox to sit well in the mix?

[Michael_Lewis]

Hello all! This is my first post in Sound on Sound, or any sound forum, so this is an exciting day. Never-the-less. I work for a church, running sound for there worship services. I'm up to par on my technical knowledge, but sometimes when I recognize a poor aspect of my mix, I don't know exactly how to fix it, so I have to concentrate on my reference songs, compare and contrast to my mixes (I record my mixes strait off the main bus, and evaluate later on) and figure out what i'm doing wrong. One of the things i'm trying to work out is mixing B.U. vocals. They seem to be overly prominent on most of my mixes, so i'm thinking it's partially where they are sitting in the mix, but other then that, are there any general rules I should be following to get the B.U. vox to sit better in the mix and be texture, rather than share the prominence of the lead vocals? I have been experimenting with getting a little extreme with HPF on the B.U. vox. Somewhere between 275-400 hz. Also any secret tricks you use? Any effects besides the typical verb/subtle delay, like a light chorus or something?

[seablade]

Hello all! This is my first post in Sound on Sound, or any sound forum, so this is an exciting day. Never-the-less. I work for a church, running sound for there worship services. I'm up to par on my technical knowledge, but sometimes when I recognize a poor aspect of my mix, I don't know exactly how to fix it, so I have to concentrate on my reference songs, compare and contrast to my mixes (I record my mixes strait off the main bus, and evaluate later on) and figure out what i'm doing wrong. One of the things i'm trying to work out is mixing B.U. vocals. They seem to be overly prominent on most of my mixes, so i'm thinking it's partially where they are sitting in the mix, but other then that, are there any general rules I should be following to get the B.U. vox to sit better in the mix and be texture, rather than share the prominence of the lead vocals? I have been experimenting with getting a little extreme with HPF on the B.U. vox. Somewhere between 275-400 hz. Also any secret tricks you use? Any effects besides the typical verb/subtle delay, like a light chorus or something?

Honestly it is more about finesse than anything and balancing levels to me. I always keep the lead a little on top of the backup vox, I will pan the backup vox provided I am on a system capable of it, and add a little bit more of a plate verb to them compared to the lead vox to pull them back in the mix a bit typically compared to the lead vox. If I need to an ADT might be used to fill them out a bit.

I typically don't use chorus much on vox, to many ways it can sound weird:)

That is a bit extreme of a HPF to me. On Vox I rarely go over about 120 or 160 depending on the vox in question, and that would generally be higher tonality females.

Of course all of this may vary a bit depending on the style of music you are doing?

Seablade

[Michael_Lewis]

Seablade,

I've been experimenting with super dramatic HPF. I'm probably trying to over compensate with such a dramatic HPF because of the the B.U. being so up front level wise. This church probably fits best into the "Bethel" worship music category. Perhaps I can send you the recording? I could defiantly use some input. I know my mixes aren't sounding super incredible yet, but i'm not quite sure where to look for fixes. Some of it is poor guitar tone from amateur volunteer players.

[grab]

Compression for me - send the BVs to a group and compress the group. Not too heavy, so the dynamics still come through, but just enough to take the edge off it. (Of course the usual caveats about compression and live sound apply.)

I wouldn't do that with HPF - you still want to hear the words, and if you're doing extreme HPF then you'll lose the consonants.

I don't know what your church is like, but you might want to check whether your recorded mixes reflect the actual sound in the church. Typically in a church you would hear a lot of the singing just from the voices without any help. Your recording will only record what you're adding though, not the overall sound.

[Michael_Lewis]

Sometimes it's hard for me analyze my mix from recording strait fromt he master bus, because it IS hard to really re-account what a room full of a few hundred people singing adds in to the mix. I just want to get my main mixes as close as possible to a studio treated song. I know obviously there simply has to be differences because of acoustic noise helping the live mix come along, but from a general standpoint, I don't see any reason why your main mixes shouldn't sound very similar to a studio treated song.

I use the Roland m480 and it doesn't allow you to compress a group of things. The only way to do that would to to send all the B.U. vocals through an Aux send,post fader at unity, and plug a compressor into the send, and reroute the aux to the mains. Which I kind of already do, except I keep the individual channel routed to the mains. So I treat this vocal "group" as a form of parallel compression.

[Mihai_dmg]

Sorry and really i didint read all of ur thread, but i understand something. You don't need to use HPF. You can use it, but you should stop it on 80 HZ. The human vocal, male vocal goes on 100 hz - 80- hz sometimes. You need plate reverb for some "room" in the mix. The reverb gives to vocal some room, so you can hear that cleary, but instead that vocal is inside the mix. First use same plate, then you will see how will go on. Cheers!!! P.S. Vocal will go like this: hpf : 80HZ. A CUT ON 250 HZ. A BOOST ON 2-4 KHZ.

[Michael_Lewis]

I'm going to have to disagree with you there. I know general mixing rules tells us to keep the full reproduction of the instrument accurate, HOWEVER this is only on an individual basis. I think using those upper extremes of what we think may make an individual channel sound thin is necessary to make a very "big" mix, so that you hear the individuality of all the. YES the human voice does produce some energy in those lower frequencies, but in a band setting you will likely have another instrument covering the audio spectrum in that range, so keeping that broad of the spectrum of the voice in could potentially muddy a big mix. That's what i've found in my experience.

[Tim Gillett]

Perhaps I can send you the recording?

Yes a sample recording would let the forum member(s) hear what you are trying to express in mere words.

[Michael_Lewis]

Perhaps I can send you the recording?

Yes a sample recording would let the forum member(s) hear what you are trying to express in mere words.

I just posted another thread asking for over all advice. Ill just give you the link to that thread. The URL is in my first post.
SOS Thread Link

[grab]

Hang on, did I just say about HPF losing consonants? Sorry, brainfart there on H/L.

[Michael_Lewis]

Hang on, did I just say about HPF losing consonants? Sorry, brainfart there on H/L.

I dont think I understand...