Outside Scoop: The Secret to Mixing Pop Vocals, Developing Networking Skills, and More

Austin Hull of Make Pop Music

It was a bit of a slow week in the world of music production so you may be feeling a bit hungry for content. If you blinked, you might have missed out on the few gems that made an appearance, most of which happened to be YouTube videos. With a couple of solid pieces covering how to mix male Pop vocals, use mastering limiters, and create punchier songs using phase alignment, there is undoubtedly an article or video in this roundup that’s worthy of your interest.

How To Mix Male Pop R&B Vocals

Austin Hull of Make Pop Music shows how he mixes Pop R&B vocals on a track called “Say It” by Kodamilo. Walking you through multiple vocal processing chains packed with top of the line plugins, Hull explains his mixing thought process. He moves through the track he’s mixed quite quickly, so buckle up!

Everything You Wanted to Know About Mastering Limiters

iZotope has recently started publishing a series called Are You Listening? It covers many different mastering topics, and it’s currently on episode 4. This week, Jonathan Wyner demonstrates different modes of limiting, the importance of level matching, and the difference between instant release control (IRC) limiting modes in Ozone’s Maximizer.

How to Use Saturation & Distortion in Sound Design

Dan Larsson of Warp Academy demonstrates how to use FabFilter’s Saturn plugin to enrich a variety of different sounds with saturation. His sound design process, beyond just what he’s doing with Saturn, is quite impressive. He creates an incredibly gritty and Neuro-sounding Reese bass and kick that rely heavily on Saturn.

Interview: A$AP Worldwide Musical Director / Producer, Hector Delgado

Hector Delgado, A$AP Worldwide musical director, and producer, appears on Pensado’s Place. He explains how the A$AP crew came together, and how he transitioned from turntablism into production. Delgado has great energy, making this quite an exciting video to watch.

EQing Difficult-to-Mix Vocals

Creative Sound Lab published a video showing mixing engineers how to deal with troublesome vocals. In the provided example, a vocalist with a really low, raspy voice has trouble cutting through the mix. Taking a step back, and thinking about the choices you’re making on recording day can save you a lot of pain while mixing, but as demonstrated, creative EQ techniques can sometimes rescue a mix.

Creating Punchier Songs Using Phase Alignment

Black Ghost Audio demonstrates how ensuring phase alignment between the left and right channel of your mixes, and between different tracks within your song can result in a mix that is punchy and impactful; both in stereo and mono. This guide provides a brief overview of the concept of phase (with pictures) before diving into how you can identify and fix phase correlation issues in your own mixes.

Developing Networking Skills to Find Work in the Audio Industry

Akash Thakkar is a YouTuber I just discovered who is a composer and sound designer for video games. He releases short 1-2 minute videos packed with information that focus on networking in the video game industry as a sound designer. In this particular video, he talks about how you can develop the necessary social skills required to succeed as a sound designer in the video game industry.

Plugins vs. Hardware: Why Software is Better Than You Think

Michael Hahn of LANDR discusses whether or not hardware is worth the investment. He provides 6 reasons plugins can outperform hardware in the studio. Some of these reasons include the fact that noise is an issue in the analog world, recalling device presets is time-consuming, and routing signal through a patch bay is laborious.

How to Give Vocals a Smooth Console Tone

Sean Divine makes an appearance on Waves Audio’s YouTube channel this week. He demonstrates how he uses the Waves V-Series EQ3, EQ4, and compressor to infuse Hip-Hop vocals with some vintage flavor, and character. The quick mixing techniques that Divine demonstrates should help you achieve a warmer vocal that sits more appropriately within your mix.

Charles Hoffman is a Mixing and Mastering Engineer at Black Ghost Audio. After graduating from the University of Manitoba with an English degree, Charles completed his education at Icon Collective in Los Angeles, CA.

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