Normalize and apply gain automation to make everything sound equally loud without applying compression.

Remove any noise that may have originated from the room where you recorded the acapella, or from the streets or noise from the singer being too near from the mic, whatever noise it is, remove it.

Comp the vocals, which is cutting the best parts of the recording and putting them together.

The first part of mixing vocals is to De-noise and Normalize, then use a plugin for pitch correction to get the acapella perfectly in tune, after that, you can use an equalizer before using a compressor to remove noise you couldn’t get rid off and then use a compressor for loudness and an equalizer in the instruments to make room for the vocal and another one in the vocal to enhance some frequencies. Before starting to mix you should comp your vocals and crossfade were you connect one part to the next one, once you have the final acapella you can start mixing. To mix vocals you will need plugins and good takes from the singer.

When you have everything ready, and fitted with the rest of the track(Synth, instruments, ad-libs, samples), then is the time to start making room for the vocals and getting the vocals to sound louder and better. You don’t want to expend a lot of time mixing a part you aren’t going to use. When people travel, usually they take hundreds of photos of the place they have been to and end up only using a few, the same happens with vocals, when you listen to the recordings you will always notice some mistakes or thing that could be improved, so to get the result you have in mind you should get as many takes as you can.Īlso before starting with the mixing process, you should check if you could improve your room acoustics, microphone or if you feel that the song needs some changes in the melody or the lyrics. The first thing before starting to mix vocals is comping, which is basically fitting together the best takes of the recording, so it’s really important that you get a lot of takes before starting with the mixing. If you use other DAW but you know well how to use it, you can follow the post without a problem. In all DAWs the workflow for vocals is usually the same, but the way of doing things is different, in this post I will be talking about the DAW that I use, which is fl studio 20.

To get the most out of your vocals you should be using audio plugins, compressors, and equalizers. The vocals are a vital part of a song, even if you have a great recording or acapella if it’s not mixed well it won’t stand out.

Fl studio not recording