A couple we're friends with have an 8-year-old daughter who has a nice clear voice. She loves Ed Sheeran's I See Fire, so I brought her into the studio to do a Christmas CD for her relatives. That's the background.
 
After she went home, I listened to the recording. I'm a couple of months into the mix (Sonar X3 Producer) and need some advice. Her voice is so soft that it's getting buried in the mix. The first half of the piece is acoustic guitar; the second half brings in an urban beat, synth bass and some strings. While I can hear her voice, I can't really hear the enunciation of the words.
 
After decades of recording loud rock and aggressive singers, this one presents a bit of challenge. Need some advice.
 

Singers MUST learn mic technique, breathing, singing from the gut, not popping the plosives. You can boost them, and de-ess them, and reduce the plosives, but it is incumbent on the singer to work with the recording engineer to get the most out of it. Not easy to do with a young child. I recommend choir? And vocal warm up before the performance. 

Make the most of the fact it is a young kid singing and just boost her voice higher than you would normally to make it stand out.   Use the spectrum display in the PC eq to see where the main power is in her voice and then boost it some more.
Shove a high ratio compressor set with a high threashold at the end of the vocal FX chain to catch the times she actually "got it right".  I'd use a compressor and not a limiter to keep things softer.
 
Maybe add just a tiny bit extra reverb to the backing tracks and a little less than normal to her vocal to bring her forward in the sound field.
 
Be careful de-essing, if you do it at all. Young kids (especially girls) can have naturally sibilant voices and de-essing them just gives them a lisp...

Jablowmi19Singers MUST learn mic technique, breathing, singing from the gut, not popping the plosives. You can boost them, and de-ess them, and reduce the plosives, but it is incumbent on the singer to work with the recording engineer to get the most out of it. Not easy to do with a young child. I recommend choir? And vocal warm up before the performance.

I'll definitely recommend she start taking choir lessons. (Maybe even pay for them, since her parents aren't well off, financially.)


Several years back I had a father bring me his 9-year-old daughter to record a couple of Christmas songs. She had already had a few years of vocal training and classical violin. It was apparent, too. She had power, control, nailed the tuning, etc. An engineer's dream. (And I'm certainly no professional sound guy.)

Exciter? Pull Tec?

When you are in the position where you can't turn her voice up any more.... you have but ONE direction to go.....
 
Turn everything else down. 
 
Either go back to square one.....delete the envelopes and pull everything down and start over..... or .....take a short cut to get there.
 
When I run into this situation, I insert a new stereo bus and route "the band" to it. That allows me to keep the mix balance I have set up...envelopes, plugs, and such, and with the level control on the new bus, I can lower the instruments to let the vox shine through.  Also, using compression and other such tools are fair game. I have used Cake's "Boost"  on occasion to get a vox up a few more db, because what matters is hearing that voice. As long as you don't ruin the delicate voice in the process, it's all good.

Listen to my song called Give Me A Chance ( http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=10977017 ) I have a strong female singer followed by a 7 year old female child singing the chorus solo .... forward to approx  3 minutes into the song to hear the comparison. I used compression/boost,  and production to let the child's voice stand out well in relation to the music.
 
That's my 2 cents and an example of what I did in this situation.

Nice piece.

How about some saturation? I've found that the Softube saturation knob in the ProChannel is great for giving vocals a bit of extra beef and weight in a mix.

^this

The big problem that many people have with a situation like this and even with more normal vocal situations too is that they mix all the music in first and then try to cram the vocals in last and wonder why there is no room for them.
 
If you are mixing any music that involves vocals you should start with the vocals. Not everything else. Vocals first! Then you get that vocal sound happening, get the dynamics right and even, get the VU meters showing about -3 to -4 on the scale and then start building the rest under. That is how it is done. At the end of the day you end up with a great sounding vocal track with the vocals still prominent and the rest supporting them nicely and the VU meters will be all at the right level too!
 
Does not matter if the vocalist is a great strong singer or a quiet little girl. Makes no difference. In the case of a quiet little girl, well you make sure you record her obviously in the quietest space you can and once you have got her down then you get in there and edit her track. Even things up level things out and so on.
 
Then you will have the same starting point as above for a great vocal mix.
 
If you are mixing a Kenny G track you DONT mix all the music and then try and cram Kenny's sound in. You START with Kenny and then build the rest in.
 
Simple rule here. If you want something to be prominent at the end of a mix then start with that in your mixing.