Dupe 2.

And one of the best ways to ensure all of the stuff that TheBand19 has mentioned above happens is to START with the vocals first when doing a mix. Then you get everything else in afterwards. When you do this you end up with a track that is vocally strong yet the music is sitting nicely with the vocals.
 
When you do it the other way around (as most do ) and get all the instruments happening first then you are trying to squeeze the vocals in almost as an after thought at the last minute. What you end up with then is a great sounding music track with the vocals trying hard to make it into the picture and often not making it in well either.
 
I find an excellent way to balance vocals and music is on a small mono speaker (a la Auratone) down at low volume. It just seems to work great. It is harder to do this loud on big speakers.

Jeff, thanks a lot for your input. Glad you like it. I wrote this song for my high school class' 50th reunion. Want it to be perfect and the saliva really stands out in spots to me. For my vocal I used Izotope's Nectar and one of their presets. To me it made my voice sound like I wanted to hear. But the compression brought out the spit. :-) Trade offs in everything, I guess.
 
The Band19, thanks again for your input.

If you can't get the mix the way you want it, then comp the vocals in, re-check your pre-amp settings, I squeeze it a little on the way in and aim for peaks around -12.
 
So practice the 1st phrase, record it, listen to the recording and decide if you're happy with it. You can solo it, and run it through your other compressors and FX. If you are happy? Then start a bit before the end of it, sing along with it, and sing the next phrase. Listen to it. If you're not happy with it, re-record it until you are.
 
This technique can be tedious? However, in the long run, in the end it sounds like a continuous performance (if done correctly) and it's the best of multiple takes. I try to stay about 12 inches from the pop filter (works for me) and also, you can sing it differently. There's singing it aggressively, "in your face." There's singing it smoothly, there's singing it expressively, many different techniques to get the performance to match the song. 

Nice job on the tune Chas. I didn't hear any spit sounds.

You can try automation. It may work! Many people do it with the "bbpbp" and "sssss" sounds in the vocal from wrong vocal filtering while recording. Zoom into the track and draw an automation that lowers the volume at those spots. 
 
I

try an expander/gate on your vocals. play with the threshold until the vocals sound natural. if the spit sound isn't too loud then this may clean most of it with minimal effort. then, as someone said, get a pop filter and sing off-axis to the mic so that the sss sounds, spit, breathing, etc., go "past" the mic. with practice you can learn to control those sounds and your mic position while singing to reduce those noises.

Tim, thanks. Glad you liked it. No one mentioned it when I first put it in the song forum. So I'm going to leave it as it is (for now).
 
Also, thanks for all the replies, guys. Will keep all your comments in mind on my next trip to the mic. :-)

Can't speak on the spit thing Chas...but man, I sure did love that song and the mix! I don't visit the song forum much anymore (unfortunately) so I didn't know it was posted.
 
The only thing I'd tweak on this mix is the ssssssssssss on the cymbals. They just seem a bit overly bright to me. But everything else was awesome and well balanced...for what it's worth. GREAT drum sound too...what did you use on that?
 
The spit thing is a hard thing to fix AFTER the fact. De-essers, slip editing, fliters, and sometimes even light noise reduction choosing the right frequency can help with this. Heck there's actually tools in Adobe Audition that have helped me remove some weird things that nothing else has...so most times, you just have to experiment. If compression is what brought it on, you can always lessen the compression and just run more automation. That's really what we're supposed to do...but compressors have made us lazy at times....so we use a bit more than we should because sometimes the automation on a vocal can be a real drag. LOL!
 
Anyway, great job on the song....I say leave the spit...it sounds fine to my ears brother. No one else will notice but you. Remember...even when something is sometimes blatantly obvious, no one will ever be as close to the stuff as you...so it will pass right by them. Short story real fast...
 
I played at Harborfest in Oswego NY a few weekends ago, 54,000 people. Our bassist had a real problem with his bass rig. We were on the chopping block having never played this place before...so they were watching our every move like hawks. We won them all over of course and will be back next year....but when his bass rig went down, me and the singer sprung into action to do a (we do a Van Halen tribute show) Eddie and Dave call and answer without missing a beat. From there, I got the dumb idea to go into "Take Your Whiskey Home" which the band hadn't played in about 4 months just to do the intro to kill time. The bassist fixed his rig and we went right into that song.
 
At the end of the show, people came up to us telling us how much they loved the show and what puzzled me was....about 10 of them said "awesome job trying to fool us with the bass rig going down...we knew that was part of the show!" To us, this was such a blatant error....how could they think it was part of the show? Well, we didn't let them think any different and replied with "yep, you figured us out...darn it!" This was a visual...yours is just audio....moral of the story brother....don't sweat it, you did a fantastic job all across the board and no one will know unless you tell them. :)
 
-Danny

Danny, thanks for listening and for your comments. Glad you liked it. I learned long ago not to point anything out because that's the first thing anyone would notice about your song (or life in general).
 
I got the drums from Big Fish Audio. It's Scott Rockenfield (Queensryche) and are called Big Rock Drums. The cymbals may be a little bright. I did nothing to them as far as EQ. They sounded great to me and I figured the guys that were recording these knew a lot more than me and had a lot better equipment than me so I left them alone.
 
Great story about your gig at Harborfest.