In most cases the lead vocal is the most important part of your mix. The best mixes out there always seem to find a way to get that vocal to sit right on top of everything else. How do they do it? Well there are a lot of small steps to get you there: vocal compression, riding the vocal with automation, and of course proper use of EQ. But today I want to show a super easy “hack” to making sure your vocal always sits on top of the mix nicely.
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My name is Graham Cochrane and I'm the founder of The Recording Revolution, one of the world's most loved audio recording and mixing blogs with over 200,000 readers each month. 
I would argue that the same can be achieved working in reverse order to how you suggest. Mixing the vocal first and getting it sounding as good as you can enables you to mix the other aspects in at the right volumes and add EQ, compression, etc in reaction to how the vocal sounds.
You can definitely work that way. I know plenty of mixers who do.
It’s really about how you work. Maybe that will work for you, but only you will know. Great tip though, does make sense (either way).
Yeah exactly. There’s no strict way you have to mix, it’s just whatever feels right, and that can change depending on the song.
Thanks Graham! I found your way of vocal mixing REALLY helpful and this video is just a confirm that what I learned seems good 🙂 Thank you for all!
Graham, great post/video, as always. Agree with your thinking, I almost always mix in layers, building as I go, ending with the vocals. Just makes sense to me personally; your EQ-ing, compressing, effecting the most important element in the mix after and according to how it plays off of everything else sonically.
If you would have EQ-ed the vocal earlier on, say before working up the bass, you might find yourself rolling off less bottom on the vocal than you would have if you’d EQ-ed it after the bass came into play. In that instance, later on you might find that the vocal’s not cutting through as much as you’d like.
That said, as you mentioned, lots of folks like to work on the vocal first and sculpt everything else around it. I believe uber-mixer Bob Clearmountain works this way. I guess that’s what makes mixing so personal; many different roads to (hopefully) get to the same place – great sounding mixes.
I disagree. Altough as we know there is no such thing as standards in mixing, i have experienced that if you mix the vocals first you can build your mix around the vocals, tailoring everything so that it fits nicely together with the vocals because they have already a defined space occupied. If i tried the other way around, there was no space left for the vocals when they finally was brought in(eq and level-wise). And if there is no space left frequency-wise, all i could do is raise the level, and of course then they are standing out “on top of the mix”. But that’s not what i am usually looking for. I want to have the vocals sit “in the mix”, not “on top of the mix”
As an afficionado of Pensado’s Place i have noticed that most of the great guests on that show use the vocal first approach, to me it just makes more sense to work that way, modelling everything around the most important part in a mix. Not to say you can’t work the other way around and still deliver killer mixes.
Besides that. Thanks for the great work, Graham.
I tend to throw up the faders and listen, working on sections at a time in context with the entire mix. I like to narrow the vocals down to a freq range and work everything around that. Great post nonetheless. You mixes speak for themselves Graham. Cheers!
I actually like to mix the vocals first AND last. In most music I mix the vocals are the most important element in the mix (along with the drums). I like to start by working on the vocals and build everything around them, like others have suggested here, but I also finish the mix by doing final tweaks on the vocals.
I got totally distracted – I wanted to hear the rest of the song. That was killer.
And then I went back to re-watch it, and that was really cool. Amazing how quickly you get it all together and how easy it was for you to have it sit on top of the mix.
Hey Graham, for some reason I can’t seem to get the video to play, is it on my end or are you having problems with the site? This seems to be the only one I’m having this issue with…
Hmmm, it would be a YouTube issue.
Hello everybody! Thanks a lot, Graham!
An easy question… Why you work the EQ and compression with the buses in vocal track? Is this only for explain us or this is your work way?
Thank you again!
By the way, I’m not american and my english is very poor, forgive me
Hi Esteban, I’m not sure I follow your question. I was using plugins (EQ and compression) directly on the vocal track in this video.
“Made Us Alive” One of the best songs I have ever heard. I first heard this song a year ago or so in another video you did Graham. I went and bought song of you songs from iTunes or somewhere. I have to tell that this particular song has a super strong affect on me. I cry almost every time I hear it. I had not listened to it for a while until a few weeks ago while driving in the car. The song just makes my cry like a baby. The words are so powerful to me. “We were sealed with a promise…. we were born at a great price”. This just affects my like crazy. “Made us alive”. Just to think what Jesus went through for us. WOW, so powerful.
Thanks Rob
I would love to hear Made Us Alive on Air1 or K-Love. I may be a little biased, but I just love your music Graham. It has meaning to me and I like your style. I just listened to my “Angels On High” mix I did for this months duelingmixes.com song in the car. I hope you get a chance to hear what I did with it. I hope to make you proud as I am a student of yours. 🙂
For those of you that are not Dueling Mixes members, check out this song Graham recorded a few years back that I just mixed this weekend.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/31988603/Angels%20On%20High%20-%20Rob%20Morgan%20Mix.mp3
I like your mix very much.
Good job.
Blessings.
this work with some standard voices but i found a rnb guy with a strange beautiful voice, i made the mix first and the vocals never fit…it is very strange
I have heard and read many times that when starting mixing, you should start with the most important aspects (instruments) in the mix which can be a vocal part, so this is disputable
“The best mixes out there always seem to find a way to get that vocal to sit right on top of everything else.”
I disagree very strongly with this aesthetic. In my judgment, in the best mixes, the vocal sounds integrated and balanced with the rest of the music, and occupies the same sonic space. Too much current mixing separates the vocal from the rest of the music, and the result sounds like a singer shouting in your face while a band plays in another room. The vocal is just another musical instrument, even if it is the “lead” instrument, and should play along with the rest of the music.
(Furthermore, I don’t even think the vocal has to be completely intelligible at all times; sometimes the more mysterious and difficult to understand vocals can be part of the aesthetic to draw you in deeper; see shoegaze music for example where often the vocal is buried inside oceans of sounds. That can have the “perfume” effect…a very slight perfume can attract one to come closer, whereas a strong perfume can actually repel).
I have the opposite problem – making vocals blend into the mix is harder than making them sit on top, I think.
Graham, honestly that is exactly one thing Mike, my bassist, and I agree completely on is doing the vocals last. Whether it’s our band or anyone else we record…vocals last. It seems so much easier that way. And I just watched your video about panning and that is where I feel I can’t get Mike on the same page as me. either he doesn’t want to pan as much as I do or not at all in some cases. But recording and mixing vocals last works so well for us. Great tutorial Graham and thanks again for everything.
You’re welcome!