Compress the Group

Here's a little trick that I've found to be very useful for mixing...

Suppose you have a number of background vocals, say, anywhere from 4 to 8 parts. Depending on how they were tracked, it can be a struggle to make them sound like a well blended group. One thing that can help is to handle them as a "group" on your mixing console.

For Pro Tools and DAW users, the process is pretty simple.

1. Assign your background vocals to "NO OUTPUT" on the main mixing panel.

2. Create a bus send. Set each output on the bus to unity (0).

3. Open up an stereo AUX track and have the input of that track be the bus send.

4. Pull up each vocal track, one by one, and hear what it is doing. Find an appropriate pan (left or right). When lots of vocals are present, make sure you allocate the panning appropriately (i.e., don't pan everything at -40 or 40...use the stereo field to your advantage).

5. Once you have a good blend of everything, insert a stereo compressor on the AUX track. Most digidesign packages come with a BF76, the plug-in version of the 1176. I like this plug in because the default settings are often perfect. I prefer a ratio of 4:1 on vocals, but you be the boss.

6. Now the background vocals will be a single unified group, mixable via one, stereo fader. If something is a little too loud, you can always reduce the send value on the bus send. It's amazing how the compression can glue a background vocal performance together.

7. Also, reverbs for the background vocals can be sent all from the AUX send...this will free up dsp on your computer.

This approach also works on different "grouped" instruments, like drums and guitars. This method is great if you want a nice, professional blended sound for your layered background vocals.