How To Mix Rap Vocals Fl Studio – If you make hip hop music and hip hop vocals, these production tips from Ken Lewis will help improve your experience and final product
Whether you’re into Jay-Z or Kendrick Lamar, Drake or Eminem, there’s no doubting the power a well-executed and well-produced hip hop vocal can convey. But for independent artists recording and mixing their own hip hop vocals and songs, capturing that vocal fire can be a daunting challenge. Whether you’re running behind a microphone, hitting “records” on a laptop, or both, where do you start?
How To Mix Rap Vocals Fl Studio
Multi-Grammy producer, songwriter, and mixer Ken Lewis has created hits with all four of the aforementioned artists, not to mention Kanye West, Fabolous, The Game, 50 Cent, and tons more. He is also the founder of Audio School Online, where he offers detailed video lessons on topics from mixing lead vocals to giving EDM tracks a professional polish. Here are some tips for recording hip hop vocals from the masters.
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If you’re working in a professional recording studio, you’re already concerned, but if you’re recording hip-hop vocals in a bedroom, hotel room, home studio, or elsewhere, Lewis suggests making your tracking space as sonically “dead” as possible.
“Hang blankets, throw rugs, hang belts across the ceiling,” he advises. “These are all things I’ve done in various places to reduce unwanted reflections and frequencies.” Your recording space may seem strange when you’re doing that kind of preparation, but remember that the cleaner and drier your voice is when you’re recording, the more flexibility you’ll have when it comes time to mix.
As with any kind of artist pursuit, remember that vibe is key to creating the right environment for you, your rapper or singer to deliver a performance of a lifetime. If velvet blankets and candlelight help create the right mood, set the scene accordingly, or if the artist does his best work with strip lighting and posters of musical heroes all over the walls, shoot Craigslist and see what you can come up with. carry on.
If you’ve never heard of compression, this beginner’s guide and this Echoes post are good places to start. If you’ve played, you already know that it can be a powerful tool when it comes to producing vocals – and hip hop vocals are no exception.
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“I usually use a compressor to even things out when I’m recording,” says Lewis. “The key is to set a quick release threshold so that the vocals always sit in the same place in the headphone mix. If a rap becomes a whisper for a second, the artist can still hear what’s going on, but if he or she raps and gets really loud, the compressor prevents you from blowing anyone’s ears off.
However, be very careful when applying compression, as it can ruin an otherwise outstanding tonal reception if used incorrectly. If you don’t have significant experience handling compressors, and/or don’t have access to a high-end outboard compressor, Lewis recommends placing a compressor on your monitor playback.
“Setting things up that way means you can listen through a compressor without permanently altering the sound you’re recording,” he says. “If you over-compress or under-compress you have a safety valve so you don’t destroy the recording itself and then have to fix it.”
One specific setting Lewis used for hip hop vocals was to set the output gain to -2.0 decibels and the cut to -15.0 decibels; Check out a screen capture from one of his Pro Tools sessions, courtesy of Online Audio School.
Cent Vocal Chain
You don’t need expensive analog gear to achieve the technique Lewis talks about. In fact, almost any recording software from GarageBand up includes digital compressors; For high-end software compressors, Lewis recommends plugins from companies like Universal Audio and Waves.
Finally – to learn more about the practical use of compression from Lewis himself, check out his voice acting lessons at the Online Audio School. This short video is a good place to start.
“When they come to record, rappers can sometimes get excited and their first gut instinct is to bury their mouth into the microphone and spit,” says Lewis. “It can easily lead to distortion and is usually not a recipe for the best recordings.”
Is the arrival too hot? “If you get a recording where the sound is clipped, you can’t remove the distortion once it’s there,” says Lewis. “When you’re mixing the track you can hope to minimize or mask it, but there’s really no good way to get rid of it.” A problem Lewis often encounters when working as a mix engineer – even on some major label projects – is unintentionally distorted vocals.
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To minimize the risk of distortion, make sure you set up a pop screen that keeps the phone six inches from the microphone. Beyond that, Lewis recommends making an educated guess about how high the ride will be and adjusting your levels accordingly. “If you’re recording another artist, scream into the microphone at the volumes you think they’ll use,” he says, “and make sure nothing you do goes into the red.”
As a side note – distortion in tracking is something to avoid, so it can have a place when you’re producing hip hop vocals. In fact, Lewis says, adding an interesting twist to a song you’re mixing can add the grit and intensity a track might need. “I like to add whatever distortion I want and control it rather than stick to it. The bottom line is that if you distort your hip hop vocal tracks while recording them, it will severely limit your options during the mix.
Take the time to dial in a killer headphone mix for the singer, whether it’s you or someone else, advises Lewis, and your efforts will pay you back in dividends.
“Before you start cutting vocals, check your headphones to make sure you can hear the music and vocals clearly,” he says. “A big mistake people often make is that the track is too high in the reference mix, which doesn’t leave much room for the artist. If the music is twenty decibels higher than the vocals, the artist will feel like he or she has to compete to be heard and it will hinder a good performance.
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To get the best possible performances from his artists, Lewis likes to go the extra mile. “I try to make the singer’s headphone mix as close to a finished record as possible, from the way the voice sounds to the sound of the music,” he says. “I want them to put on headphones and feel like they’re listening to a finished record that’s being recorded live at that moment.” Among other things, that sometimes means adding effects such as reverb and delay, tailored to the artist’s taste, to the mix he or she hears on the recording.
“You can see it on an artist’s face when you do it,” he adds. “I’ve probably had a couple dozen times where a singer I’ve never worked with has started laughing after the first take and said, ‘I can’t believe how good this is.’ That’s what I accepted. Time to ensure they feel they are recording a
This is a simple but important one: make sure the headphone mix you’re listening to is the same as the one your vocalist is working with.
“If there’s a problem, if something is too loud or too soft, I can adjust it before the artist says a word and often before he or she sees it,” says Lewis. “The whole point is to always keep the artist in the comfort zone.”
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Lewis suggests that headphones aren’t the only thing that needs to be fully prepared before starting to track. “The most important thing is to get
Taking care of the technical stuff and making sure it’s right, so the person behind the microphone can focus on getting things great. For Lewis, that preparation includes everything from setting up a music stop with a pencil for the lyrics to making sure the vocalist’s headphones aren’t too loud — to having room-temperature water for the artist.
“If you’re recording yourself, the same advice applies,” he says. “You don’t want to share the roles of engineer, producer and artist at the same time. Do the engineering, get your headphones and rough mixes right, make everything sound good, and when you’re ready, hit ‘record’ and ‘stop’.
The next step? Focus on getting great recognition.
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