If you aren’t shelling out for professional mastering then spend a little time. The release time is where you get the magic. Then come back to it and start with mastering. I know it seems like the right move when so many big commercial releases are extremely loud, but major label releases are selling far less than they used to and are trending back toward less loudness in favor of better feel (e.g. Play the records back in your car, on a boom box, at your friends house, in headphones, on a laptop. And I’m thinking in broad, technical terms: “Will this record have too much or not enough bass for general playback”, “is the top end stylistically appropriate, or is it too much or too little”, “does the midrange feel open and even, or is there build up in a certain range?” Unless there’s specifically a prominent resonance that the mixer missed, I’m usually looking at fairly broad bands. Don’t do it. Although, rap and hip hop is an aggressive form of singing you never over compress it. Today, all popular compressor plugins have 1 or 2 presets dedicated to rap and hip hop vocals. If you are in DIY mode, look for broad EQ moves — a dB or two of treble, a dB or two of bass. As with equalization, the less compression you apply during mastering, the better the result.In fact, the quickest way to make your master sound like a demo is to overcompress it. Your email address will not be published. He loves music, writing and travelling. I don’t know one who regularly uses a harmonic exciter or reverb on a record, except in the rarest of circumstances. Please try again. In short, the amount of compression. Mastering for Hip-Hop music includes accentuating both the low-end frequencies and high-end frequencies of a track, without resulting in distortion. SAMash Interest Free Musican’s credit card, IK Multimedia – More Then an Impulse Sale, compressor reacts to the input audio signal, Recording Vocals in the Studio [Video Tutorial], Pop Vocal Mixing Tips: Adding ✔️ Reverb And Delay In Pop Vocals. However, compressing is an art and there is no hard and fast rule to apply the same settings on your vocals. We just sent a download link to your inbox. Next you want to back the ratio down until you don’t hear the movement so much as feel it. Download this 40-minute workshop by Matthew Weiss, now for FREE! It’s hard to describe this exactly but if you set it to where you hear “movement,” like the whole record is kind of pulsing a bit along with the rhythm, you found the sweet spot. What are the optimal compression settings for a Hip Hop snare, kick, bass, or percussion? If, your compressor plugin doesn’t have a rap vocal preset you need to create one by setting up all the parameters yourself. I recently mastered an album produced by Stoupe (of Jedi Mind Tricks). The aggressiveness of vocal decides how much ratio you should apply. Probably, you would find the sweet spot anywhere 5:1 to 6:1. As rap vocals are aggressive ones, you should always apply fast attack time to your compressor so that it could come into the process as soon as possible otherwise you can end up with some part of vocals uncompressed. Black Friday Extended! Usually the top end will be a little lack-luster with the exception of vocal sibilance and hi-hats. Lastly — not every record needs buss compression! If you can’t hear your vocals enough, why try to fix it by adjusting the entire record when you could simply adjust the vocals or something that may be getting in the way of the vocals. Turn the limiter up to where it sounds fairly loud, but not distorted or taking away from the depth or punch of the record. This article is aimed specifically at artists/producers who are mixing and mastering their own records. Whatever settings you apply in rap vocal compression, always listen and tweak. Quick recap: If you’re doing a lot when mastering, something probably needs to be fixed in the mix. [For best results, learn how to use compression and get a great hip-hop mix]. After listening a bit, my initial move is to start moving a top end shelf around. Take notes. Required fields are marked *. If not, figure out what’s bugging you and see if it correlates to what you hear in other playback systems. Your email address will not be published. This only becomes a concern when people start A/Bing their records against commercial releases. Matthew has mixed for a host of star musicians including Akon, SisQo, Ozuna, Sonny Digital, Uri Caine, Dizzee Rascal, Arrested Development and 9th Wonder.