FEATURE: Beta Hi-Fi Music Festival 

Studio Tip: From The Big Leagues
 -By Range Producer Aaron Levinson
 
Every once in a while I feel compelled to share a real secret based on some of my experiences in various studios around the country.  This one comes from a guy that has been blessed with doing mixes and re-mixes for some of the biggest pop and r&b vocalists in the game today.  He is let's say kind of an eccentric personality but as a mix engineer this guy is a total monster and I learned a lot working with him a few times over the years.  I was having a little trouble getting a lead vocal to sit right in the mix and he said that as an r&b expert that was kind of his specialty and he was kind enough to reveal this little secret to me.
 
Okay, you are 95% done your mix, things are basically completed but you still have the nagging suspicion that the vocalist is not "popping" enough out of the mix. One common mistake is to only use additive equalization to achieve this goal.  That is usually okay but in some cases it also adds some subtle but still undesirable phase shift to the track and it feels a little smeared and puffy as a result of that approach.  Here is the secret: take your entire mix-minus the lead vocal and bus it down to stereo, this is the acid test and will tell you how your mix really sounds anyway.  When you have the thing bussed go to the master EQ section and go in at about 1K and pull it down about 2-3db.  You will hear the whole thing kinda "thin out" in the mid-range and the whole track will sound a little bit "weaker" for lack of a better word.  Okay, you have created the "trough".  Now bring in the lead vocal track that you muted when you made the instrumental stereo mix and go in and add to the lead vocal the exact amount that you took out of the stereo mix. 
 
Now, just to reiterate you have scooped a trough of roughly 2.5db @ 1K from the instrumental mix and added it back in JUST ONE THE VOCAL.  Okay, so you have not really changed the overall amount of EQ, you have simply allocated it to a different and far narrower part of the mix. When you play it back now you will discover (hopefully) that the vocal rests much more comfortably in the track and is also more intelligible overall.  You may have to massage the exact EQ point and the Q to get it just right for your particular vocalist but I have found 9 times out of 10 that this solution offers pretty dramatic results when used sparingly.  Well I hope this little trick helped you out and happy mixing...