29-05-2014, 10:11 PM
The vocal levels and brightness are a tough issue to tackle in general. In certain rock tracks (like Soundgarden's Spoonman) the lead vocal is relatively quiet but bright (usually the engineer's explain in interviews that they want to vocal to bite through the mix). On the other hand there's bands like RHCP where the vocal is very dark (dark vocalist singing into SM7) but the engineer pushes it really really loud "to bring out the proximity". One could consider that mixing dark, yet low-level vocals (and making them work) is the ultimate challenge. Since I'm a boring guy and a chicken I usually play it safe and mix them both loud and bright 