Mixing unusual vocals

[UrganNagru]

Hello! I'm gonna cut straight to the chase here. None of my band-mates are producers and while the guitarist can mix the instrumentals, we are having a lot of difficulty getting my vocals to sit well in the mix. I am also by no means technically inclined when it comes to music as most of my performance experience was live to a grand piano, without a microphone.

 

I have been told that I have a lot of mid-range for a female singer which sounds right as I'm a mezzo-soprano, unfortunately that's also where most of meat of the guitars is, so the challenge is getting the vocals to sit in the mix without things getting drowned out.

 

At the moment my priority is getting a demo mix which is good enough that I can upload to soundcloud, twitter etc. to get the ball really rolling. I'm a perfectionist and I get really anxious putting stuff that might sound crap out there but this is my dream so I'll push through!

 

I've attached a couple of samples of our sound, I really tried my best getting the vocals to sit onto the already mixed instruments but I'm coming clean and admitting I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, so any pointers, tips n tricks etc. would be truly amazing.

 

Thank you very much in advance.

Track 0 demo mix.mp3 Tyrant demo section.mp3

[john]

Something that does work is using a notch filter on the guitars to suppress the guitar at key vocal frequencies... ie subtractive EQ, allowing the vocals to cut through and sit within the mix. You don’t need to dial it right down, and you can trigger the EQ using the side-chain on your noise gate. That suppresses the guitar at vocal frequencies a little only when the singer is singing, and switches it back out when they are not singing. Pretty useful with keyboard washes too. Use your daw automation to find center frequencies and Q for different vocal sections and that’s you.

 

I’d recommend trying subtractive EQ, instead of boosting the vocal.

 

Also swap out vocal reverb for stereo slap-back delay. It has a similar effect to reverb without loss of clarity and it really, really helps vocals cut through. It’s a pretty modern sound too.