Pedaling Prince Mix: Johnny Lokke - Promises and Lies

[Pedaling Prince]

Maybe part of the frequency masking issue might be because the vocal levels are a little low compared to the rest of the track? Sometimes compression can help with that, but you're not a fan of compression if you can avoid it, so maybe the EQ route is the way to go.

Actually, when used judiciously on an individual track to achieve a particular effect I'm not opposed to it. In fact, in my mix of Kevin Reeves' "It's About Time" (not yet posted) I actually split the lead vocal over two tracks with the primary vocals on one and the chorus on the other. On the verses I used the same gentle compression I always do; on the choruses I SLAMMED the compression on the voice so I could bring up the music more. This was a case where I was able to use compression to my advantage dynamically, making the choruses louder than the verses so the chorus had that extra "punch" when it arrived.

In this case, though, compression would bring the vocal up in volume, and I already used automation to LOWER the vocals during that final high-register "scream;" when the vocals were on a fixed level the scream was WAY louder than the rest of the vocals to the point of being obtrusive. So for this particular problem you're right; I'd be reluctant to try using compression here.

Most music produced in this style has a cleaner, more tightly controlled bottom end, so maybe some more high pass filtering in the guitars and vocals would cut the mud and give the vocals and lead guitar solo some room to breathe and let the dropped notes come though a little bit better.

Wish I still had the original mix project; sounds like a good idea. If/when I decide to revisit this one to take a stab at fixing that vocal flaw I'll keep that in mind.

Another thing I tried was panning the vocal all the way to the right (where notes kept dropping) and sending it to a very short delay effect panned oppositely and volume matching the send bus to the original signal. It didn't completely satisfy my intentions but it helped keep some of the dynamics. I also tried cutting the upper mids in the guitars a teeny bit and putting some (very light) emulated tube distortion on the lead vocal part to give the mid range a little more content and character, but it wasn't clear to me whether that helped or not so I left it out of my posted mix.

Funny you should mention cutting the midrange on the guitars; that's generally standard procedure for me when working with overdriven electric guitar. I find overdriven guitar and vocals hard to balance together effectively; I find a midrange cut and low and high boost both give the vocals a place to cut through the guitars but this also usually gives the guitars a nice, deep, "chugging" sound I really like.

This tune also has some crazy resonance and frequency build-up in the low mids that a lot of us have had a really hard time taming, so it could be that the lower mids are overwhelming the lower content of the lead vocal.

That makes sense. Hm... might try cutting back a bit on the lower mids on some tracks in the next go-round and see if I can't figure out which tracks are causing the most trouble...

I had the same problem and wasn't able to fix it, so if you pin down a solution, do share!

Will do!