Today we’re going to continue addressing the main problems with recording your own vocals. Last time we addressed how to deal with vocals that are distorted or too hot. After following the instructions in that post, you should have properly recorded vocals.

So if you followed the last post there’s a good chance your vocals might seem too quiet. In this post we’ll address this problem and how to fix this issue.

I discovered these tips after working on an album with an artist in Miami. This was in my earlier years and for some reason the vocals had an amateurishness that we couldn’t fix.

I later realized after searching through hundreds of dollars of books and tutorials. Then I re-tested this on myself and recorded using these methods and the mix was way faster and cleaner, it worked like a charm.

These solutions are taken directly from my book DIY Mixing Secrets, which you can get in the Soulful Raps Packs.

Problem 2 – Your vocals are too quiet

Before we solve this, we’re going to do some cleanup on your vocals.

The reason we do this first is we don’t want to turn the volume up on any of the noise, only the good stuff.
So we reduce the bad noises, so when we increase the volume later we don’t raise the volume of the junk.
This just means we’re throwing some light eq on the tracks to clean up any unwanted bass frequencies.

This fix will reduce sounds like computer noise, neighbor bass noises, these things can
still get picked up unless you have a super soundproofed room inside of a room situation.

So just find some type of visual EQ and you can apply these types of eq settings. If you don’t have a visual EQ just cut out any frequencies below 100hz.


Your eq frequencies should look like the screenshot above for now. Once you have all the vocal parts that you want for your song cleaned up, we move onto the next step.

We’re back to solving the main problem which was your vocals being too quiet…

The solution is gainstaging (kinda)

We will make sure the loudest each recorded take gets is -12db. This is done by controlling the volume, which you can do with compression or my favorite method, VOLUME automation.

Just a reminder the whole point is to process your vocals and get them ready to be made louder. But before we get to that step, let’s focus on gainstaging below.

This is how I do that…

• Step 1 : I press record on my DAW but do this without arming a track or enabling vocal recording.
• Step 2 : I move the fader for the volume of the vocals track in real time and bring the lowest parts of the recording up to -12db. So when I see the volume get louder than -12db I bring it down, if it’s too low I bring the volume up closer to -12db.
  
  
• Step 3 : Afterwards I go back and edit my automation to make it more accurate and make it sound natural and not include any sharp volume jumps. It should look something like this image above.
• Step 4 : When this is done most of the vocal take will be hovering around -12db but never OVER -12db.
• Step 5 : Do this with every take you record that you feel will be in the final mix.

Most people use compressors to do this, which is fine, but compressors sound robotic to me and the vocals sounds more natural to me doing this method. When this is all done you should have all vocal tracks maxing out at -12db each and they should have a consistent range of volume from -14db to -12db. The end result is that the quietest part of each vocal take will be raised up to the loudest parts. This means your vocal is now balanced.

What about the loudness tho?

Now you can bring the rest of the instruments down to -12db and start mixing. You can even add additional EQ/Compressors to the vocals, but make sure the final vocal remains at -12db. Keep in mind that most of the loudness will be added during the mastering process. After mixing the vocals with the instruments which are also at -12db, your overall mix will have enough space (or headroom) to be made LOUDER.

Don’t take my word for it, just try this out with one of your songs and let me know how it works for you!

Until Next Time,