{Do D.A.T. collabo_pt. 3}

Hopefully by now you're pretty close to finishing up a beat for your remix of "Color Scheme". Today we're going to focus on mixing the vocals to sound as good as possible.

The areas I want you to focus on are:

• Balance the volume levels of the vocals and your beat
  
• Compressing the vocals
• Panning
• Using reverb with an Aux track.

Volume Balance
Since this is a song that has a strong vocal on it, you want to make sure that the main vocal really stands out so you can hear it. Listen closely to your beat and how loud it is relative to the vocal. If the beat is as loud or louder than the vocal, TURN IT DOWN a bit. Go to the Mix Window and pull down the fader of the Aux track that has Reason on it.

Also, the doubles tracks and adlibs should not be as loud as the main vocal. Try turning them down a bit so that they are supporting the main vocal, but not competing with it.

Compression
You should all be somewhat familiar with using a compressor and what it does to the sound of a vocal track. I want you to spend some time compressing Dat's vocals and getting them to sound nice and fat. In a professional recording, usually almost every vocal track has some compression. If you want to compress them all, go for it. At the very least I want you to compress the main vocals on the verse and the chorus:

• DAT v1.01
• DATchorus
• DATchrsl 1

If you forgot how to use a compressor, here is a link back to the Friday Night assignment where we learned how to compress.


Panning
Panning allows you to place certain instruments/tracks to the left or the right side of the stereo field. Doing this you can make your mixes richer and more interesting. Take a minute to listen to a bit of this track by Daedalus and hear how he's using panning. Pay attention to where the instruments are, from left to right:


If you go to your Mix Window, each channel has a section that looks like this:
To pan the track, just click and drag the slider to the left or the right. Generally, you want to keep the main vocal in the middle, and the backing tracks (doubles, adlibs, etc.) somewhere to the left or the right. For this song, one place to use panning would be on the chorus where Dat is repeating certain phrases ("black faces", "white cops", etc.).

I would also encourage you to pan some of the instruments in your beat. In Reason, you can adjust the panning with these knobs in the Mixer:

Reverb on an Aux track
The last thing I want you to do is to set up an Aux track with Reverb on it and see what it sounds like to send some of the vocals to it. To set this up, do the following:

1. Create a Stereo Aux Input track.
2. In the Inserts section of that track, create a D-Verb reverb processor (Multi-channel plugin>Reverb>D-Verb)
3. In the Inputs section of the Aux track, select Bus 1-2
4. In the Sends section of one of the vocal tracks, select Bus 1-2.
5. You should see a floating fader that pops up. Raise this fader to start sending the track to the reverb.
   

{Friday Night (pt. 2)_Using a Compressor}

Once you've got your Friday Night statements recorded, you can start editing them down to make a single, smooth statement. These can only be 2 minutes max (including music), so please watch the time in the timeline!

As in our earlier assignments, I want these to be very cleanly edited, so please be sure to do all the following:

• Get rid of all the extra noise when the interviewee (you) isn't speaking.
  
• Zoom in and make your cuts on the zero line crossing
• If you stick two regions together, be sure to use crossfades between them to make the transitions smooth.
• Don't be afraid to rearrange the things being said. Put them in whatever order makes sense to you.
• When you add music, pay attention to the relationship between the music and the vocal. Feel free to move things along so that they work better with the beat.
  

Once you have finished editing, you're also going to practice working with another tool to help you smooth out your vocal: a compressor!

A compressor is an audio processor that automatically adjusts the loudness of your track. They are very commonly used in all areas of audio and, in my opinion, really help to create that polished, "professional" sound. Compressors can be used in a few different ways for different reasons. Today, we'll be using them to balance out the volume level of our recordings and make it so that the sound of the person's voice stays very even throughout the piece - never too loud or soft.

Please do the following:

1. Copy your Pro Tools session folder from the Shared Media drive to your computer.
2. Open the session.
3. Mute the track that the interviewer was recorded on.
4. Listen carefully to the recording of your voice. Pay special attention to places where your voice gets softer than other places.
5. Make sure Loop Playback is turned on.
   
6. Highlight a short (5-10 second section) where you have both a loud part and a short part. Hit play and just let it loop.
7. Go to the Mix Window (Command =).
8. Find the dark grey section at the top. This is what is called the Inserts section.
9. On the track with your voice, click on one of the double arrows in the Inserts. Click on: plugins>Dynamics>Compressor/LimiterDyn3
10. You should see this window pop up:
11. Can you hear a difference in the sound already? You can always click on the bypass button to check what the audio sounds like without the compressor, but remember to click on bypass again to turn the compressor back on.
12. Find the knob called Ratio and set it to 4.0:1. This will affect how much we are compressing the signal. In this case, we're keeping it pretty light.
13. Now, while you are listening to the track play back, watch the meter that says GR at the bottom. Pay attention to how low the orange meter gets at the LOUDEST part of your recording.
14. Find the knob called Threshold. Keeping your eye on the GR meter, slowly start turning the Threshold until the GR hits about -6 at its lowest point.
15. Find the knob called Gain. Turn it up until to 6.0 dB.
16. Click bypass to check what the vocal sounds like without compression. Click bypass again to check what it sounds like with compression. Smoother?
17. Now find the knob called Release. Turn this all the way up and then slowly start turning it back down. While you are turning it, watch the GR meter. You want to see the meter bouncing fairly quickly, but smoothly - not UP-DOWN-UP-DOWN
18. Now lastly, find the knob called Attack. Turn it all the way up and then slowly start turning it back down. You want to listen carefully for the point where the voice starts to get a little muffled, and stop. (Actually, you should probably turn it back to a little above that.)
19. Click again on bypass. Listen and pay attention to what the track sounds like without the compressor and with it. If it sounds pretty good, but not quite right, try adjusting some of the knobs and see if you can fix it.
20. Save!!!
21. Have one of the instructors come over and check out your work.