Pro Vocals in 3 Easy Steps 

▶︎▶︎ FREE 5-Step Mix Guide: www.5stepmix.com 🎙mic from this video: sweetwater.sjv.io/9gBoXy

you whistling that 2,7k and allowing me to actually hear it is nuts

One technique that I have learned to remove the resonant frequencies from vocals is to find the mic sweet spot. Most times it’s not the mic in front of the mouth but it could be the mic on side of the mouth, or under the mouth or even the mic by the stomach. There are no rules, move the mic around while the singer is singing and you will hear it. I’ve even pointed a mic to the back of a singer.

Love the info! Just have a comment about the "pro vocals aren't timid." I've recorded in a pro studio for years and my engineer observed that I'd start off too strong, or he'd catch my energy expand far too quickly in certain places.. His catch phrase was "Don't wake the baby." What he taught me is magical because now when I record at home, I sound much better if I sing as if I were singing to a baby, in a sweet little voice with a smile. You may think you sound too timid, but it's not the case at all. It sounds far less harsh, and way more professional. But if you're singing in an acid rock band, you can disregard this tip.

Thanks for the helpful tips Joe!

Great video! Thanks for the help!

Thanks for another great video! Have learned some great things from you, Joe!

Nailed it AGAIN!!

Excellent, easy to understand Video.Thanks again Joe.

Thank you so very much!!

Thanks for the great video!

Thanks Joe, great tips as always!

It Work! Thanks!

Excellent information sir!

Bro you're a life saver! Thy a lot!

straight forward .. thank you

you're just amazing

Excellent tips. The tip about ringing frequencies was a real eye opener for me! Thank you so much!

Hey Joe. I am so grateful for those videos. I learned so much from you. I think I learned more from you than from my school. You are a great teacher. ❤

Just wanted to say I've learned a lot from your videos. And I think the most important lesson is to simply balance the basic sounds without any effects or compression. Mixing and mastering is a seriously complicated thing, and while I may make the excuse of old tired ears, all we have to do is compare our mix with other properly mixed songs. I used to think sound engineers have a limited shelf-life. Now I think there is no excuse for old tired ears.

Another excellent video! I finally heard the dreaded whistling, thanks to the clear careful way you walked through the "problem frequency" issue. Thank you!

VEry clear explanations with good examples.Thank you for sharing your knowledge.

AWESOME!

Man, thanks for sharing this

Thanks for helpful video.

Very informative video. You taught me how to hear ringing. Thankyou!

I have just found you as I re-enter home audio recording after a long layoff - great vids, man. I appreciate your forthright and easily understandable tips. Happy New Year from New Zealand!

Another idea to add up,ty sir👌🏿👌🏿😊

Just discovered your channel Joe - thanks for all the content!!!

great explanation

very good lesson Sir

Dude, that vocal whistle stuff is nuts!

release the full version of the songs it sounds amazing✨️

The ringing sounds like sleigh bells - I never look for whistles, gonna start now! Thanks Joe!

Great tips! Woofy vocs also are contribute to room/booth/mic to close to voc res filters or diff surfaces, low mud sound buildup Proximity effct can affect, ie: singing directly in mic, distance, under or over mic, etc..great help again! Filters, pop filers, diff pop filters, old school nylon over metal filters. Compressers, eq's, sat, dstrt, harmonics, de-ess, limiters, right mic or pre for voice help as a good start source on & on etc... Great voice or performance is def a +++ as a lot of this is mentioned! Good Voice!

the 3 songs I chose to listen to are "Another Life" by Motionless In White, "All Time Low" by Jon Bellion, and "Babylon" by Normadie. all three very different styles and genres but those three songs have great vocals and have always stood out to me vocally, and after watching this video listening to them Im noticing a lot of things that I definitely can apply to my own production style and I would love a video where you go more in depth on mixing techniques you would use to achieve professional full sounding vocals. Thanks Joe! love your videos.

Great video. I am really impressed you are mainly using stock Studio One plugins. Bravo. For the final compressor, I would have chosen to clip gain it so the compressor works less but I guess either option works.

Thanks for the valuable info. I like to use an envelope tool to tame wild transients or spikes in the waveform.

I've been actually doing this for the last few years and it took me way too long to figure this stuff out. But this is truly the 3 single most important things to get a vocal that doesn't cause Pain and ear fatigue, I mean seriously! Coloring, leveling, creative compression, saturation all become less important when you figure these techniques out.

Your new lighting scheme looks much better now.

literally found you last night while working and i’ve just been binging your videos since. So awesome what you’re doing! Maybe you could analyze a professional vocal from a popular song and talk through what’s going on with the vocal in relation to the mix and all of that. could be cool

💪🏼

Thanks Joe, there's some courses that would've taken 30 hours to explain this

I’ve learned so much about vocal mixing from your videos lately. Wondering if there isn’t a reason to use a vocal rider to automatically tame peaks vs using a compressor?

Agreed 100%.

Cool

any chance that I could hear this full production once it's done? This is one of my favorite Christmas carols of all times, and I'd love to hear it. I'm already loving just a little bit I am Hearing.

Just found out about your channel and love the information! I have a pretty inexpensive Maono PM320 series condenser microphone that came with a pop filter, shock arm, shock mount, and that black foam cover that goes over the condenser mic like you have on yours. Do you recommend that I put that black foam cover over the mic to record my lyrics to the song I produced or just record into the condenser mic as is without the black foam cover?

Ben, just going to my monitors and listening to vocals recently. One thing I’ve noticed, is that music and vocals is not as bright as we think it is. While yes, it is important to have brightness on ear project, mixes are as bright as our brains remember them. That is to say, if we get a custom listening to music on consumer, playback systems, aware, the base is turned up, and the high-end is cranked, that is the response we’re going to subconsciously look for when mixing ourselves. The reality is The, if you listen to your studio monitors, You’ll find, that lots of mixes are actually more mid forward than base or high-end.

Great video. A little confusing on how finding ringing puts the vocal on top? All in all, great advice as usual.

How can you control the intensity of frequencies in the voice, for example when there is a long, high note that is usually in the chorus of the song?

My dog likes woofy vocals :)

I really appreciate your mentorship and I have learned so much from you Joe. Thanks for putting this channel together. I noticed on this video and the other one about "Why your vocals sound bad" there is no mention of whether or not you are tracking the vocals (these particular vocals in the video and/or in general) whether or not you are using a highpass (from hardware or software, including a mic switch, EQ etc.) or a compressor (hardware or software). Perhaps you should explain if you have done this or not so we know what the deal is. My guess is you do, as you are keen on getting the best initial recording possible, which I totally get. Are the recommendations here on top of compression (and HP/EQ) embedded in the recording? If you using hardware, what is it and what order? If a vocal gets a bit neutered by highpassing before compression (as the compressor won't be responding to low end as much -- see "Why your vocals sound bad) should I not highpass on the way in? I know everyone has a different take to some degree but I was under the impression that subtractive comes before compression and additive after, but I can see how this can cause some loss if mojo. I understand it may "depend", but what do you typically do? In this video you do highpass before compression, so this is one area where I am confused. I think you can see what I am getting at here, please help me by filling in the gaps...from the moment you hit record what is the order of moves, both hardware and soft? I know it varies, but please share the typical order for vox Audio input > hardware comp > hardware EQ > ...? Thanks again man

stay in life and if you jump up too high I 'am going to smack you downs 🤣 But seriously joe ,you explain in a very simple ,easy to understand fashion. Whenever a something new comes up to me to mix ,I just open RU-vid search how to mix _____ Joe Gilder and in 10 to 20 min ,I am can go like a pro for it.

Just wondering how you "dock" you three effects together?

curious how that keyboards stand is working, backwards? would bang my knees in that position, just sayin', and it would rock forward in between chords, lol!!! (why I need to design a new keyboards stand, but it would cost $1000+ ;) truly, have a learned alot from ya, and I'm prob wrong about the stand, haha.

The woofy part is what I've been trying to remove, can you describe how to remove it?

Joe, question for you: If I use an equalizer plug in like Pro EQ to boost frequencies, but then turn the overall gain on the equalizer down, is that the same as subtractive eq? Or am I still adding distortion with the boosted frequencies and then just turning the over gain down including any added distortion?

Great video Joe as always can you help me out as I’m a bit confused!! I have a mic pre but I want to know coming out of it to my Presonus interface should I add more gain or should it only be set from the mic pre thanks !!

hi joe, just a quick question. Could you give a tip on how to print or bounce my vocals with my reverb+delay bus channels? my reverb and delay Bus have a compressor to duck them a lil bit when the vocal kicks in.

"Sounds Like A Tuuuuuuube" LOL 🤣🤣

That ringing freaked me out, can you please explain where it came from?

The most important thing is a great singer who knows what they are doing…..

@homestudiocorner what would be the best way to remove that woof?

How have I gone this long without hearing of a de-esser? The amount of time I've spent manually trimming sibilance is embarrassing. Anyone have some de-esser recommendations?

Joe, I don't know if you'll see this but if you do... can you please make a Christmas production / session that we can see how it was arranged, mixed, and mastered. I think that would be great.

Please share your new template 😊

That's crazy, I didn't even hear that 2.7KHz the first time.

totally could be wrong but the ringing around 2k could be the mic capsule resonating , what do you think?

🙂👍

beer confidence counts? lol drinking at my home studio Na i did for my first songs then i get used to and now i dont need to drink lol

But you didnt explain how to get rid of the woofiness… like i see what you did on the vintage eq and the light compression but i feel like you should have explained that part. It seems like you purposely left that out. You spent the bulk of the time speaking about 1 notch for the whistle. Which, dont get me wrong, was great information, but i just would have liked to have seen you explain that “dewoofing” process. Other than that, great vid!

You were every so slightly off with your whistling resonance in the word 'all', which is why you had to turn down so much, it was actually at 2897Hz, you were attentuating 2780Hz.

Not "woofy"; "muffled".

90 percent of vocals I hear are weak and flat

What about that ugly " F " ? fftthtththtth-F ? Bad vocal transients in general ! You'll never hear those bad things in a pro studio with pro producers and studio ingenieurs. They would never let it happen or go through the production ! Dou you think Andrew Schepps or Chris Lord Alge would let transients like yours here be there when the song is finished ? I do not ! In my opinion there aren't any s'es to use a deesser on. All of them are harsh !

I don't care for your new mic. Your voice lacks fullness. sorry buddy...

Big Fat subscribe! Great vid easy to follow, consice with examples. I can actually understand what you're doing and why. Which means I'll be able to apply what you're showing to my work. Thanks & keep going!🫶🏾