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Hi folks. My name is Matthew Weiss, and I am going to teach you how to mix
rap vocals. I have been mixing for over 10 years now, close to 15,
something in there, I don't know I've lost count. The point is I've worked
on a lot of vocals. I've treated vocals for everyone from Gift of Gab,
Blackalicious, to Jean Grey, to Royce da 5'9", to Joell Ortiz, to Speech
from Arrested Development, Gorilla Zoe, and on and on and on. The bottom
line is, I've worked with a lot of vocals and I know what's needed to make
a vocal sound great.
As it turns out, it's actually not that difficult to get a vocal sounding
good. Now of course, nothing beats going into a very expensive studio,
working with very high end gear, and really doing the best job possible to
get everything sounding fantastic. But, even if you're not in that kind of
a budget situation and you're just recording at home, and you have some
basic plug-ins, you can still do a really good job and that's what I'm
going to show you how to do.
I'm going to break things down into four basic steps. The first step is
going to be cleaning the vocals up. The second step is going to be
controlling the dynamics. The third step is going to be enhancing the
vocal and making it sound polished and larger than life. And the fourth
step is going to be treating the space around the vocal creating a delay or
a reverb. After that, I have a special interview with a vocal producer
that I work with very frequently. She is very good. Her name is Laura
Zahn and she is going to explain how you can get the most out of your
voice. Whether you're a rapper whose just trying to master their own
delivery or you're a producer who is working with other rappers. That
interview is very valuable.
After all of that, I'm going to grab another mix and I'm going to show you
on a completely different mix the same ideology, the same thought process,
and go through that one over the course of about half an hour. And between
the four step tutorial, the interview, and going back over the same ideas
again you're going to get a comprehensive understanding of exactly what you
need to do in order to get your vocals sounding great. And of course, if
you want to check out more you can always read the articles at
www.TheProAudioFiles.com. And certainly feel free to contact me at
www.Weiss-Sound.com, or follow us on twitter. We're out there.