From the course: Audio Mixing Master Class

Vocal control - Pro Tools Tutorial

From the course: Audio Mixing Master Class

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Vocal control

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- [Instructor] Some vocal tracks are all over the place in volume and need some extra-special care to level everything out. This trick will bring some order to that super-dynamic vocal. Let's listen to the track, and zero in on the vocal, and also watch the meter right here, and watch how active it is. Let's zoom in on it so you can see. ♪ We don't mourn your passing, ♪ ♪ We're gonna keep you here, ♪ ♪ Don't bother knocking, ♪ ♪ It's not enough. ♪ - [Instructor] Now you can see what happened was that there were two things going on. The first is, there were certain words that were louder than some of the others, and there were certain words getting lost, and you can see this by the meter, and how much it was fluctuating. Usually if the meter doesn't fluctuate all that much, three to maybe six dB at the most, then you can be pretty sure that the level of your vocal is going to be pretty good, and in fact sometimes you want it not to fluctuate at all, depending on what kind of song it is and the performance. But in this case, we'd like to bring some more order to this lead vocal. So, the first thing we're going to do is add a compressor. What we're going to do is set this to somewhere unlimiting so it's eight to one, 10 to one, 12 to one, somewhere in there. We wanna give it a fairly fast attack time and a medium release. Now let's have a listen. ♪ We don't mourn your passing, ♪ ♪ We're gonna keep you here, ♪ ♪ Don't bother knocking, ♪ ♪ It's not enough. ♪ - [Instructor] So now it's looking a little better. Let's consist a little bit. ♪ We don't mourn your passing, ♪ ♪ We're gonna keep you here, ♪ ♪ Don't bother knocking. ♪ - [Instructor] This Pro Tools compressor/limiter is actually a very good limiter, works pretty well, but what we're going to do is add a second processor right behind the limiter and this is going to be set for compression, and this will even things out just a little bit more. ♪ We don't mourn your passing. ♪ - [Instructor] Take notice this is set to two to one, three to one, it usually works really well. And again, a fairly fast attack time and a medium release or so. You can also also take this knee control. The knee control is how fast the compressor works, and sometimes how smoothly it goes from turning off to turning on. The higher the number here, the smoother it is. So we'll make that fairly high and you can see right here, you can see how that changes. There's a fairly hard knee there. This is off, and this is on, and then we can smooth that out. Now let's listen. ♪ We don't mourn your passing, ♪ ♪ We're gonna keep you here, ♪ ♪ Don't bother knocking, ♪ ♪ It's not enough. ♪ - [Instructor] Now if you look at the meter, it's pretty solid, it doesn't move too much. ♪ We don't mourn your passing, ♪ ♪ We're gonna keep you here, ♪ ♪ Don't bother knocking, ♪ ♪ It's not enough. ♪ - [Instructor] So these work pretty well, now let's listen in the track. ♪ We don't mourn your passing, ♪ ♪ We're gonna keep you here, ♪ ♪ Don't bother knocking, ♪ ♪ It's not enough. ♪ - [Instructor] So to tame a very dynamic vocal, first insert a limiter in the signal path of the vocal channel and set the ratio to ten to one or more to limit the peaks. Insert a compressor in a signal path after the limiter. Set the ratio anywhere from two to one to four to one and compress it enough to keep the level even throughout the song. Remember to set the attack time on both of the processors to fast and the release to slow.

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