The Motown Mix

Here it is according to Yep. than you sir. :) I had to look this up in the techniques forum. Try it out boys. Try it out. Good to develop a repertoire of skills. Yes.

"7.Studio tricks and mixing techniques

This is not even close to a comprehensive mixing guide to vocals. This thing has already gotten way too long, and mixing is totally a whole nother thing. But I will include a few quick tips that are relevant to think about as you record.

Motown compression (a.k.a. New York compression—don’t ask, I don’t know). This is a very useful technique for situations where you have a dynamic, expressive vocal track where you need a way to keep the musicality of the performance but also find a way to push the lyrics and the articulation out in front of the mix. You basically clone the vocal track, and apply heavy compression and presence-range eq boost (somewhere between 4-10 kHz) to the clone. Now you can treat the main vocal part like any other instrument, using reverb and dynamics and tonality and whatever, and then just dial up enough of the compressed clone to keep the articulation and clarity. Knowing about this technique can also help keep you from overcompensating as you record.

Low frequency rolloff: This can work wonders to get a vocal sit well in a dense mix. If you’ve never tried it, you’ll be amazed at how much of the low end you can cut out, even on deep, resonant voices. Cutting the lower mids can also help reduce any pitchiness or honky or nasal artifacts. Use a shelving filter.

Doubling the vocal track—having the singer sing along with him/herself can thicken up and even out a thin, uneven, weak, or subpar singing voice. This is easily overused, but on a lot of hard rock records, a combination of low cut and doubled-up tracks is what turns poor singers into powerful rock stars (think Linkin Park). Chorus or delay effects can also be employed with similar results.

The “whisper trick”: Having the singer whisper along with the vocal track in a monotone can be a quick and easy way to get a “huge vocal” sound. Again, easily overused, and most effective on weak vocalists in dense mixes.

Autotune and it’s offspring: Avoid using it indiscriminately on the “auto” setting. If you have a great performance with one or two off notes, just adjust them manually. If the whole performance sounds off-key, you need to evaluate realistically what the singer is capable of. Sometimes good singers get bad in the studio (see item 1: psychological preparation). If this is the case, you owe it to the singer and to the recording to try and find a way to get a better performance of them. If the singer just sucks, it’s still your job to do what you gotta do to deliver the best product possible. In all cases, do not succumb to the temptation to just automatically put autotune on every track. For a variety of aesthetic and psycho-acoustical reasons, “perfectly in tune” is not necessary desirable, and does not even necessarily sound more “in tune.”

Hope some of that helps.

Cheers. "