 What's up, Freda? My name is Estie Mike and today I have D-Bane with me. D-Bane is an awesome rap artist who I've actually had the pleasure of working with in the past on videos like this. So today he's here to help teach you guys how he sweetens his audio and makes his audio sound the best when he does his rapping, so whether you're a rap artist or a gameplay commentator you can use this to apply towards your recordings to help get that better sounding voice. Now he's going to be using Logic Pro, however you can use these techniques on pretty much any audio recording software. What's up guys? My name is D-Bane. I'm a rapper, producer, recording artist, engineer, all that good stuff. I'm here to help you guys out today with how to mix vocals and produce them for, you know, the most professional sound possible. So if you want to bear with me, you know, get over here on the computer and we'll go over some information. Hey Leon. This is Leon. He's going to help today, okay? He's the best rapper alive, okay? You got to understand. Okay, so basically where you're going to want to start out is with a nice noise gate to get rid of all the background noise and everything that you may be hearing, you know, any kind of ambience or anything like that that could, you know, just not sound good in a recording. My example we're doing rap vocals usually take the attack all the way down. You basically just want to mess with the threshold here to get it. So when the other vocals are coming through, it's just the main vocal that you can hear and it's none of the nuances and ambience of anything, you know, any breathing by an engineer right next to you. If you're, you know, in a small apartment or bedroom studio like I am at this point in time, next with that you want to start with an EQ and generally what I do to start out is we like to cut out all the, you know, low frequencies in the mix, especially for individuals with not as low voice ranges or, you know, any kind of female vocalist or anything like that, going to want to cut down some of the low end. I usually cut it around 100 to 200. Just, I mean, it's something you're going to have to analyze your vocals with as well with the analyzer and in logic, it is very helpful to see, you know, where your frequencies are, what you can cut out to make sure there's no, you know, excessive frequencies in your mix. And next part you want to start with is compression. It's another thing where you're going to want to, you know, check into the vocal, see, you know, how the vocalists that you recorded, you know, did record one of the things that a lot of vocalists will do. You're going to get a lot of variance in how loud they are at points and times. So by doing a compression, it kind of helps to, you know, even everything out to make sure you get a, not necessarily natural sound, but a more constant level in the ears so you don't have parts that are, you know, excessively loud and parts that are super quiet. You want to kind of even everything out so the listener can, you know, differentiate everything and make sure that, you know, everything is how it should be. And then I know with a lot of recordings, you can get a lot of sounds, you know, especially with rap vocals. And I do a lot of alliteration myself. So a lot of, you know, your S and syllables and all that good stuff. You're going to hear a lot of that's gonna be funny here. So what you want to do is you want to put a de-esser on here, which is an automated processor that is, you know, designed to take out those annoying, you know, silabance issues, things like that. You're gonna want to set the threshold and everything for the problem area that you're having to make sure you're not cutting out, you know, parts that you don't want, but just the more, I would say, annoying parts in it where the message, you know, that good stuff are just sticking out. You don't want to hold a lot of that in your mix. And then generally I go with another EQ, kind of, brightening up the high ends and the highs to the mids, because with the de-essing and the compression, sometimes you do lose some of that in the mix. So I try to go back in and, you know, increase that, put it back up so it kind of restores what you've lost previously with all the other processes. After that, I mean, you'll generally want to do any other kind of effects, such as, you know, a subtle reverb to give it, you know, some life, you do delays and other effects, your pitch correction if you're into that. If you're seeing vocalists, you need a little pitch correction to make sure you're hitting the right notes. This is the point in time where you want to do that and kind of, you know, like I said, reverb, delay, any other effects, like distortion, or, you know, special spots or anything like that. Usually what I'll do for if it's just a special spot, I'll take that chunk of vocals out, move into its own channel and give it its own, you know, bus for that to make sure you're not, you know, getting the whole effect on top of the whole vocal. And then, of course, another final step I like to take is if you've got any problem areas where the compression didn't hit or you've still got some loud spots, you've got your automation, which is especially helpful, you know, volume level. You need the spots a little high so we could take that really down here a little bit. Just make sure everything's even. You can do this with panning as well. I've got a pan that you can, you know, say I want this to be starting out on the whole right side. We can do that, man. No big deal. But anyway, that's basically what we're looking at to help get your vocals as professional sounding as possible with maybe a limited setup or anything like that. So hopefully that gave you some, you know, good information for at least, you know, a starting ground of where to go to start to produce your vocals for a more professional sound. Like I said, this is just kind of a template. You're going to want to go in and make, you know, adjustments that cater to the vocals themselves. I can't give, you know, a dead on what exactly to do it. You know, it takes, you know, an ear for it sometimes, as well as, you know, just the patience to sit and listen and see what needs cut out, what kind of effects you may need to add or anything like that. I want to give a shout out to Mr. Zesty Mike for giving me the opportunity to do this, be a little more relevant on YouTube than I have been. Thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you learned something and have a wonderful day. Well, anyways, guys, that's it for today's video. If you want to see more of D-Bane, go check him out. His links are in the description below. And if you like him, maybe you can even use some of his music in your videos. As long as you credit him, just message him first, whatever, talk to him, see if you like it. And of course, if you want to hang out with this guy right here, you can go check me out in the links in the description below as well. And we will see you on Friday. See you.