Need Advice on Mixing a Vocal to Karaoke Tracks

[leigh]

I have a vocalist client who wants me to overdub him on some Party Tyme Karaoke tracks for demo purposes. The good news is he can really sing. The bad news is I have to listen to the tracks!

I have no experiences mixing with these kind of tracks so I'd appreciate any suggestions on how to get the best results with these tracks.

Thanks.

**Leigh

[buzzsmith]

I've done this a lot, so I'll share a few things that I do. This is a little harder than one might expect.
Others may have different approaches.

1. You're stuck with the quality of the tracks. They have improved over the years...some are outstanding!

2. When mixing, I'll set the track level where it peaks at around -6 to -8 or so to give me enough room for the vocal.

3. Then add the well recorded vocal. I start at unity on the mixer, 0.00. EQ and limit/compress as needed. I usually go pretty gentle.

4. This usually gets me in the ballpark with the vocal to track balance.

5. Then I'll draw volume lines on the vocal, in case he or she gets too soft or too loud against the track. Sometimes, I'll leave the vocal alone, and draw a gentle, and hopefully non-noticeable, curve to lower the track volume and then draw a line back to my nominal track level.

6. I've also been known to put a limiter on the track, so when it does get really loud, I've got a third hand to keep it a bit under the vocal. You could also use MW Equalizer and back down some of the frequencies where your vocalist is sitting in the spectrum.

7. Also, I might start the track louder than where it's gonna eventually be when the vocal comes in, and again draw a gentle curve downwards when the vocal does appear. (So the song doesn't sound too soft when it begins.)

8. Add a mastering plug like iZotope Ozone 4 to keep the apparent levels up.

Hope that helps!

Buzzy

(I make think of some more "tips" later, but I'm sure others will join in, too.)

[mhschmieder]

What is the material? Are you REALLY stuck with those tracks?

If you have ANY control at all, check out Karaoke Version's website. I came upon it recently when I was asked to do an exact replica of "Pure Imagination" sans vocals -- a challenge that I failed to meet due to how difficult that song is with its rubato and weird timings and cues.

Karaoke Version has been a lifesaver. For just $2 to $4, you get multi-track sources that are NOT MIDI-based but rather are recorded by professional musicians playing real instruments. Unfortunately they're in MP3 format, so you have to convert them to WAV and live with any of the artefacts, but I haven't found that a problem so far.

You only have to buy the Custom Version once -- then on your account login page, you keep resetting which single track you want to enable (and disable all the others) in your Custom Arrangement and re-download. It really doesn't take all that long to do this and then convert/upsample/etc. -- maybe fifteen minutes total.

[buzzsmith]

Thanks for this link.

Buzzy

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[leigh]

What is the material? Are you REALLY stuck with those tracks?
…
You only have to buy the Custom Version once -- then on your account login page, you keep resetting which single track you want to enable (and disable all the others) in your Custom Arrangement and re-download. It really doesn't take all that long to do this and then convert/upsample/etc. -- maybe fifteen minutes total.

Thanks for this link, mhschmieder!! I just listened to some of the samples and they are all miles beyond what my client has. He wants to do jazz ballads and some swing tunes à la Sinatra, Cole, etc. I think he will be open to using different tracks because he acknowledged that what he had wasn't that great and I think his voice really deserves the best he can get. And he'll probably listen to me.

With the Custom Arrangements, do you mean that you download the first track (drums for example), reset your account, download the next one(bass), and so on until you've downloaded them all? If that's the case then I can actually mix them!

**Leigh

[Phil O]

I've had to do this twice now. The biggest problem I found was that the Karaoke tracks had tons of reverb. The vocal by comparison sounded unnaturally dry. In both cases I was able to find IR's for Proverb that came close to the sound of the Karaoke tracks. A little of that on the vocals and everything sounded a lot better. Also, the various tracks differed greatly as far as EQ was concerned so mixing was more like a mastering session. I agree with buzz. It's not as easy as one might think and I'd rather work with raw individual tracks, but if you take your time and use your ears, you'll be fine.

Phil

[mhschmieder]

Leigh, you simply click on the "Make my arrangement" tab on your "purchased products" page, or something like that. This brings up the same page you see when you are first at the website auditioning the custom arrangements, but this time the full song can play out vs. the snippet that they expose on the public site to prevent piracy.

It's a bit cumbersome to do this over and over again, but most songs have fewer than twenty tracks altogether, and it's DEFINITELY worth this "grunt work" as it frees up the creative process and gives you so many mix options down the pipe.

The raw levels do seem pre-mixed to a certain degree, but I readjust them and use PowerPan to narrow some of the tracks in the mix or to position them properly. I might apply some light EQ in a few cases and a touch of "consolidation Reverb" for a sense of a consistent recording space.

Some of the orchestral stuff seems to have been done on a Kurzweil K2600 workstation, when I listen really closely. That's super-high quality of course, but a bit compressed. OTOH the sense of compression may be due to the MP3 delivery system. At any rate, for these projects where I'm providing realistic backing for new parody vocals, it works quite well.

Phil, are your Karaoke comments general or specific to working with the Karaoke Version website material? I wasn't sure. I've only used them for two songs so far. The first is the highly complex Willy Wonka theme ("Pure Imagination"), and the second was for that awful Katy Perry song "Peacock". I only used that site for the latter so I wouldn't have to spend much time on such dreck, which we only dredged up in order to do a parody for the comedy show I'm part of.

I did audition quite a few songs at the site to get an overall sense of the level of quality, which for the most part is remarkably high as well as being extremely good value. I think the ones that weren't as good were probably produced in the early days of the site, when they were still learning their craft of how to pull this off the best.

There's some huge gaps in coverage -- such as NOTHING by David Bowie. But it's probably better that they have attempted to cover a wide variety of genres vs. just sticking to pop/rock. It's possible also that they had copyright/permission issues in some cases.

[Phil O]

Phil, are your Karaoke comments general or specific to working with the Karaoke Version website material? I wasn't sure.

Both times that I had a Karaoke project to work on, the client brought the stereo (pre-mixed) tracks to me on CD. I have no idea where these tracks were obtained, so my comments were general. This is the first I've heard of Karaoke Version. I'll have to check them out for any future work of this nature.

Phil

[mhschmieder]

Yep, they're my first call now. I can't believe how many hours I spent over the years painstakingly recreating songs from scratch, just because on-line sources sucked! I see no reason to reinvent the wheel now that it's round instead of square.