When mixing your vocals with the free hip hop beats, a good pair of monitor speakers is a must.

You can have the perfect recording, but if you can’t hear how it will translate to other systems, because you got crappy monitor speakers, you are not going to get a great mix.

So a quality pair of studio monitors is a must. But don’t get caught up in those huge monitor speakers with 12 – 15 inch bass. Sure they sound great in the store, because they have sound proofed the room, but at home without sound proofing it’s going to mess up your sound. The bass will bounce off your walls and ceilings, even with curtains and carpets installed. You need proper bass traps and measuring the room, adjusting with Eq to be able to handle deep frequencies well.

So unless you are prepared to do that, I suggest going with a small pair of good quality studio speakers. 90% of the time spend on mixing you will be focusing on the mid frequencies anyway. When you occasionally need to check the low frequency of the mix, use a good pair of headphones instead. Headphones can playback the low frequencies without problems.

But remember, don’t mix your entire mix using headphones only. They don’t translate well compared to when playing on speakers. The stereo perspective and depth is different on headphones, so you might end up with a mix that sounds great on headphones but dull on most monitor speakers. A combination of both is the best solution by far.

Happy mixing.

Johnny Jam

One of the most common task when mixing vocals to the free hip hop beats, is to find out how loud the vocal should be in the track.

If the vocals are too loud you can lose the energy from the beats and it will sound boring, and if the vocals are too low, it can be hard to hear the words.

First you need to compress the dynamic of your vocals with a compressor. Most recording software has several compressor plug-ins. When mixing vocals I like to go with vintage sounding compressor plug-ins, like the UAD L2 plugin. They are easy to adjust because most parameters are already fixed for the most common task. You don’t have to worry about setting the right attack or decay. It has a fixed setting that sounds wonderful on vocals. All you need to do is selecting the amount of compression. Be careful though. Don’t compress too much when mixing vocals. Look at the VU Meter when setting the compression level. I like to compress hip hop vocals 4-6 db on average.

To find the best level for the vocals, you should compare your mix with some of your favorite songs. Always listen a low to medium volume. If you listen too loud, you ears will fatigue, or even worse, you can lose some of your hearing over time.

When finding the right level, I like to listen at low volume on small speakers when mixing vocals. Compare with other similar recordings and make sure the overall level of the song is the same as your mix. Listen to the music first, adjust your mix so the level feels the same, and then slowly increase the level of the vocal until you clearly can hear the words. Compare again with your favorite songs, this time listening to the vocal level of the song. Try to match it as close as possible.

Mixing vocals is one of the most important tasks to master. Because the vocals will usually be the loudest component of your song great care has to be applied to make sure it sits perfect in the mix.

Good luck mixing…