Transcripts
1. Course Intro: Ladies and gentlemen,
welcome back to another course
with yours truly, key Orion, the man who
is obsessed with making great music and teaching
how to make your own. In, in today's course, I'm going to teach you how
to mix vocals like this. I don't want to choose
almost something elevated. You don't want to
move like a CEO and I'm going to walk
you through this beat. This is a remake ish. It's a completely different
song that I made, but it was inspired by
the song honest by BBS. And then I'm going to walk you through all of the
creative decisions that went into this vocal
chain that I made. I also created a Justin
Bieber vocal templates. That way, if you want to, you can just plug and play that'll be linked up
in the description below. You don't have to worry about
building it out yourself. But if you're curious about the EQ choices that compression depressing and all of
the effects that I added in order to get that
sound for the vocals, grab your beverage of choice. Give yourself 35 to
40 minutes to learn. And let's dive in is I'm gonna
give you a quick heads up. When I was recording
this tutorial by computer was being
a little bit moody. So there are a couple
of glitches in there, but the show must go on. I think there's
still some gems that I'm excited for
you to learn from. So without further ado, let's jump into the course. You have any questions,
feel free to hit me. I'm at key Orion everywhere
online and yeah, looking forward to
see what you make, feel free to send me your
project if you want to. I'm going to ask
that you link up your SoundCloud or a photo of your projects,
something like that. Because I'm really interested
to see what you all make in which you're
inspired by these days. So don't forget about
the class project, but that further ado,
let's jump into it. I'll see you there.
2. Re-creating The Beat + Using Reference Tracks: Alright gel. So when I was
about remaking this beat, let's listen to the beat first. You can kind of get a vibe
of what I'm talking about. So when it comes to me, one of the most important
pieces of this is learning how to
listen to beats well, and then you can
kind of pick and choose and steal
things from them. So that's his beat and
I'm going to play you my beat without the vocal, that's a completely
different beat, but that's also the point. Check this out. But if you listen to the trunk, see there's a lot of inspiration
there from his trek. Honest. I think one thing
that I want to talk about is when you are, borrowing ideas are inspired, don't feel like that's a bad place to be
if you do it right, you'll create something
completely new. But using that inspiration, I think, is a great
way to start. So for me, I didn't know
where the track was gonna go. I just knew I loved that
song. I love that beat. I wanted to make something
somewhat similar. So let's turn my vocals back on this with that
beat and everything. This is what my son turned out to be a little bit of sound, not even remotely close
except for the drums, but this one won't
teach you how to make. I don't want it to
something elevated. You don't want to see you in a major way in on
the same thing. So just to give you a quick
overview of the beat, we have the low end, which is the kick
and the heat away. Sorry, my computer's
terrible, but cool. So that's the low end. You get these kind of not sure what happened here. Let's go for recording. Not sure why that happened, but we're moving on and
then we have the drums. So we have listened to Justin's. When you get done. You to sign in the high hats. He has those claps. He has those little snares. Then here I added
some other I had. So this is how it sounds with the low end. So that's cool. And then for the melody, this is where Justin tract sound super rad minds are very different, completely
different melody. This was a, something that I found on
splice is a loop on splicing. Then I chopped it in, edited it. Let's see what we
actually did over here. So we took it and that'd
be pitch it or anything. I think we might have
even reversed it. So this is the melody.
Pretty simple. All I've added to this are some retro color OTT in an
auto filter to filter it down. But these aren't really
even super crazy effects. But I just wanted
something vibe. I knew I wanted because
Justin's there's not a lot of It's a pretty spacey melody that he has a lot of
room for his vocals. I didn't feel like I needed
something that was like a super crazy and your face
melody listened to Justin's. I tried again away alone
as far as my safe haven, I needed my ****
piece and I can say, I love that little vocal. And here it goes, I
added some vocals to not nearly as
cool as Justin's, but his vocals, that, that vocal in his song is like
one of the main melodies, which I think is super cool. And so that for the most part, that's a beat, like it's
a pretty simple beat. I think making a lot of space
for your low end as always a super important
having drums that smack some cool or
just a cool pattern, and then you create the
vibe with the melody. Think of this more like a
canvas that you're going to paint on your
creating a canvas. And then you'll add the
vocals and everything. After that, you don't
need a beat that's super crazy with a bunch
of things going on. So that's the beat in general. And then I want to show
you how I got vocals that I shot for it to sound a little bit more like beeps.
So let's jump into that.
3. Vocal Clean Up 1: Cool. So in this piece, I wanted
to talk to you about how I went about cleaning up the vocals because that
to me as though sport, when I start with a vocal, I want to make sure that I
clean it up first before I dive into the compression and adding effects
in all these things, I want to clean it up. I often recording in places that are not
acoustically treated well. And so I've created
this template for your bedroom or your closet wherever you are that
you're recording. These are these aren't for like professionally recorded
vocals because that's often not where
I record my vocals, but I wanted to walk you
through it real quick. So in studio rack, if you load this up by waves, if you buy the
template, dangerous, go to Open preset file. You'll go to the
name of the file, which is this 121, just me were vocal template. And you'll load it up. And it will have all of
the macro knobs for you, all of the EQ and everything. And you can kind of
dial these into taste. And so what I'm gonna
be walking you through is the reason that
these are laid out like this is because this is my process for how I
go about treating, but I cut out the lows, I've cleaned it up
first, add a little bit, compression, ds them a
little bit, can glue, delay, all these things that I'm going to walk
you through one by one, but I just wanted to show you. I don't have them in the one
I'm going to be walking you through because I
didn't send them. I'm not sending
him to the macros, the one that I've built for you. I wanted it to be
easy. So I have all of the effects sent two macros. The one that I'm
actually showing you is just me just kind of going through and just creating
everything from scratch. I create it from scratch. This is more what it looks like. So the first thing that I did was when I listened
to Justin's vocals. He has a pretty high pitched
voice, which is cool. When I'm singing in this, I don't have as high pitch
of a voice adjusted, but I wanted to
make sure that it had the low rumble taken out. And I really wanted to try
to take out as much of that crappy room
noise as possible. So I'm going to walk you
through these one at a time. So let's solo the vocals. And again, we're gonna
get this is Justin's vocal, like bringing one. Okay. So that's Justin's this is mine. I don't want to choose
something elevated. You don't want to move. I can see you in a matrix. Live improve, weigh
in on the same page. So you can tell super spacey, they still, they're
very compressed. They feel like that kind of
modern hip hop R&B vocal. And so the first
thing I did was I enqueued out a lot
of these lows. And I'll take each of these
offerings through them one at a time so you can kind of
see what each one is doing. But just be warned. D sound terrible without effects and things
on them. Terrible. So this is what they sound
with nothing on them. I don't want to choose. I want something elevated. You don't want to let
me actually take off the doubles, let me
drop the doubles. But you can tell it's like their data sound they got
like they just sound fluffy. Sounds like I'm singing through some sort of I don't know,
singing through somewhere. You can't really
hear him very well, but so check this out. This is the difference with EQ. I don't want to
touch on something. You don't want to move. I can see you in a matrix live improve
when on the same page. So that just cuts out
a lot of low end. I'm just cutting here.
It's all subtractive. I'm trying to take stuff out
before I add stuff to it. And then I bring in
this EQ and compressor. And this one, I've done a lot of cutting on the
lows, as you can tell. Some a lot of cutting
and cutting it. 0.6. I'm cutting it, went to 75. I'm doing a lot of low cutting. And so this is a little
bit of compression. And so this is now with more subtractive EQ and a little bit of
compression at it. This is without it. I don't want to choose, I want something out of AD. You don't want them to move
out and see you in a matrix. Live improve when
on the same page. So as you can tell there
too, It's like there. I've cut out so much
of the low end of the vocals now that there's
not a whole lot left, but I'm not worried about
it because I'm going to add stuff back in
later as we go. So the next is a little
bit of decreasing. Honestly, this is like the frequency that the
DSO just comes with. Just shows you this is one in the template
that you can use. You can kind of dial
things into taste. But to me, I'm just getting a
little bit of ds and going, I'm not worried about it
too much at this point. Let's get a little
bit. You'll want to choose, I want something. You don't want to move. Let me see if I
could turn off this. Maybe I could get a little bit more juice out of this bad boy. I don't want to choose, I want something elevated. You don't want to move. I can see you in a
matrix. Live improved. I don't want to choose, I want something elevated. You don't want to move. I can see you in a matrix live improve when
on the same page. Let's see that as we
turn these all back on. Alright, so let's now
jump into the next piece. And this is a C4. This is like a, this is a
compressor that I'm using, a multiband compressor just to catch the peaks and
really bring in some of the, take out, some of the low end. And I don't love.
4. Vocal Compression: And so we're still
clean up the vocal. And now in this piece, we're going to add a C4
in all this is doing, I'm using in this one
is to still try to take out as much of
that boxy sound is I can use a multiband
compressor. It pretty much has
these different bands. So you can compress a different your lows,
highs, admitted. And so this is what I'm doing. If you look at the
multiband compressor, I have the tax set pretty fast, but it's not doing a ton. You know, on the move
I can see you in a matrix live improve
when on the same page. So check this out. Say you got a man, but it's certainly not a ton. There's not a ton going on. It's just kind of getting a little bit of that
boxy sound out. Now, this is where I
get a lot of my volume. At this point, I have done
all of these vocals soloed. I haven't added, I haven't been listening to them
with the music yet. But you don't want
to create all your, all your vocals in a vacuum. Because then when you
add the beat back in, You're not going to
actually know how it sits or how it actually sounds. So this is how now I'll bring the beat back and I'll have, I'll turn on this arc
compressor and you're gonna see we'll get a lot
of volume out of this. Again, I don't have a ton of us. You might have a tunnel ratio is only the two-to-one
here pretty much. But I bring the
threshold down and I've got the gain boosted way up. So it's the difference
between the air compressor on or off. All the same thing. On the same thing. And the next piece
is this C4 that I, I, this C4 is now what I'm going to add
compression back in. So now I'm adding in a little, I do the pop vocal preset and then kinda work
with it from there. And just to, kinda brings
out some stuff in the highs, I just again add
a little boost to the mids district to bring back some of the maybe the energy that we lost,
something elevated. You don't want to move. I can see the same thing. Solely on occasion. I end my chain with
another d'Azur. This siblings do. Yes, sir. Because I find that
this makes it for me. I like to add this the
end of my chain after I've added all the rest
of the effects in, because then it kinda catches any small things that are kinda poking out through the mix that aren't really love. And then I jump in
and add the effects. And that is, now that we've
gotten the vocal cleaned up, we've got a compression,
got some volume. We're going to add
a bunch of effects. And that's going
to jump into now.
5. Adding Effects: Alright, now when it
comes to the Effects, when I listen to Justin's vocal, if you take this check
this out. You get spicy. I like the occasion. On
occasion, that's your testimony. So again, it's not like he has a ton of crazy
effects on here, but they're definitely
reverb doubt, maybe a little bit of delay. They'd been widened.
These are some of my go-to effects to create
that sort of a vocal. And I'm going to do
these one at a time. So you can kinda see what
the effect is of each one. I'm gonna again solo these. I'm going to solo the vocal
right now so that you can hear what the sound
like in isolation. But when you're actually
adding effects to your vocals, do not add them in without listening to
the beat at the same time, because you'll create
this perfect vocal, then you'll bring your be back. And you'll realize that you
can't hear any of the effects because you didn't actually mix it with the beak going
on at the same time. So check this out. Okay, so the first
thing I'm gonna do is add a parallel split, which means these are effects that I'm not adding
directly to the vocal. I'm actually adding
them to a parallel and then I'm bringing them in. If you don't know,
I'm talking about Google Checkout, parallel chain. And you'll see all
the time. But for those who do know what
I'm talking about, That's why we add a
parallel split here. So let's turn that back on. Okay, so the first
thing we're gonna do is add this h delay. I want a little bit
of eighth note delay, but it's not a ton. I don't want to choose. I want something out of 80. You don't want to move. I can see they've improved. On the same page. Say you got a man. Suddenly my computer,
so freaking out, but we're going to keep going. The next one is another,
another h delay. This can be any type
of delay you want. If you get the preset, you'll see that
their age delays. But this one is a fourth delay. So that I have two
different delays going on just to create a little bit
of space for the vocal. I don't want to choose, I want something elevated. You don't want to move. I can see you in a matrix live improve when
on the same page. So these will be accentuated the more
that you add reverb. And as you can
tell, there's still a little bit of headphone bleed in the in my recording, but I'm not too worried
about it because I know that when I bring the beat back in, it's not gonna be, I'm not
going to cure it that much. I can hear that even like
Drake recordings and stuff. So I don't feel so
bad about having it. If you have crazy headphone bleed might be
worth looking into. But I would say if it's
something that's like nuts, I wouldn't worry about
it too much. Okay. And we're gonna
come back in here. Hopefully my computer doesn't crash while we're doing this. And then add a little
bit of reverb. This is a little bit
of Plate Reverb. So it just pretty much it puts the vocal sounds like it
puts up a vocal in a space. I don't want to choose, I want something elevated. You don't want to move. I can see you in a major. They've improved
on the same page. Not super noticeable, but as I keep adding things that have
come out a little more, then next Reverb I
add is the one that actually makes it feel
like it's a big reverb. And this is one as
little bit longer to delay tail decay time is 6.7, which is pretty long. The millennium verb
stood erect preset from stood erect present
the millennium verb, preset from true verb in waves. Let's see if I can
speak English. And this is what it
sounds like with the, with the real reverb going on. I don't want to choose. I want something elevated. You don't want to move. I can see you in a major live improve when
on the same page. Might even be too long. That's a long decay. I probably, if I were
doing that again now I'd probably take
that back a little bit, but for the sake of
this presentation, I'm going to worry about it. So those are most of kind of getting someone like
the spicy effects. And the next thing
I want to do is start widening the boat. When I listened to
Justin's vocal, again, whenever you're listening
your reference track, whichever track you choose,
you're working with. I like to have I like to have as many similarities
to it as I can. And so his sounds really
spread out to me. And so I'm using a doubler for that waves doubler instance. I've just turned off
the direct piece. I don't want to choose
something elevated. You don't want to move. I can see you in a major live improve when
on the same page. Great listening to headphones, like you probably say, you've got a man but his son, that he has shut it. If you aren't listening
on headphones, you might not even be able
to tell the difference, but all these things added up together make a big difference. But it's all the little things kinda added onto each other. This flanger, I just, this is just a key, a move. I just like a flanger, adds a little bit
more course to me, not a huge, you're going to
see a huge difference here. I don't want to choose
something elevated. You don't want to move. I can see you in a major live improve when
on the same pay. This next one,
though, is a big one. This one I got from
Drake's engineer. This is just like a crazy, I don't even use this for
anything else but vocals. But it adds some crazy
kind of distortion. I feel like it adds a little
bit presence for the vocal. So check this out
and you can tell, I've barely added
much of this in here. These are pretty
much knobs that say how much of the
effect I'm using. Some barely using any, but I noticed a big
difference. Shake this out. I don't want to choose, I want something elevated. You don't want to move. I can see you in a major live improve
when on the same page. And this is with everything
solely on occasion. Graham, show me away. Say, Hey, what's a bit with
JB know as holy matrimony. I like it. I don't want to choose
something elevated. You don't want to move. I could see you in
a major way to say, Hey, this sounds amazing, don't get me wrong,
might not even close, but I feel like it's at least somewhere in that ballpark and that's what I wanted
to show you guys. Was that like you don't
have to record in a super professional cod
get decent sounding vocals. And the thing is, a
lot of people aren't even going to care to you. I want you to know how to
be able to get your vocals at least in a general
range where you can be proud of them
and you can send your tracks to friends
or show your tracks to friends and be proud of them
without having to pay an engineer a bunch of money
if you don't have it, if you have it an
absolute recommended because respect to engineer. But I think it's
important to also know these pieces that go into making a track and
making vocals. So that way you can
also articulate yourself better if you are
working with engineering. So I hope that was helpful.
6. Conclusion: I apologize that my computer was super wonky on
this walkthrough, but hopefully you
at least gotten a couple of ideas
in jams when it came to mixing your vocals
in that modern R&B sound. Again, to want the template,
you have to worry about it. You can get it in the
description below. But for me, when I go
about creating a track, I really like to use
that reference track and really listened to what are the small things
that they're doing. I know I'm not gonna be
able to make it perfect, but it's not about
trying to get a perfect. I'm just trying to get it in that general range in
that ballpark area. Take messy action. Start to learn good hands-on,
stop watching tutorials. Actually get in there,
tweaking knobs and switches. And hopefully
before you know it, you'll actually be making
decent sounding tracks. So that's it. Thank you for tuning
in. As always, in if you want more content like this thing's linked up in
the description below. Chicken next time, peace.
Kia Orion, Artist & Music Producer
