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MIX MASTERS: POP VOCALS WITH PHIL TAN

Published On January 16, 2014 | Tutorials

Tutorial: Paul Tingen

Born in Malaysia, Tan graduated in 1990 from Floridas Full Sail education facility, and was given his big break by
rapper/producer Jermaine Dupri. Since then Tan has amassed credits like Mariah Carey, Usher, Justin Bieber,
Whitney Houston, Alicia Keys, Aretha Franklin, Outkast, Jay-Z and many others, and won three Grammy Awards as a
mix engineer on Mariah Careys album The Emancipation of Mimi (2005), Ludacriss album Release Therapy (2006),
and Rihannas Only Girl (In the World). A staggering eight of Rihannas 10 US number one hits were mixed by Tan.

Diamonds is the 10th US No. 1 that Barbadian mega-star Rihanna has scored since her international breakthrough in
2005. It was written and produced by the Norwegian duo Stargate and American hitmaker, Benny Blanco, and mixed
by Phil Tan. Its the kind of melodic mid-tempo pop ballad on which Stargate appears to have established a 21st
century monopoly, the odd-ball ingredient being its four-to-the-floor dance kick drum that gives it movement and bite.
Its also lavishly arranged with strings, piano and a whole panorama of keyboard sounds all competing in the
mid-range frequency area. According to Tan, the rough mix was already in great shape, and his main attention during
the mixing of Diamonds went into making sure the vocal sounded great and cut through the track. He explains some of
the things to focus on when mixing vocals, using Diamonds as an illustration.

1. MAKE SOME ROOM

When youre mixing a pop record, youre always aware that the listeners will be focusing on the vocals. The vocal is
the star of the entire show. It has to keep the listeners attention for the entire track. They might like the instruments
and arrangements, but they wont necessarily care as much for them as for the vocals. In the case of Diamonds, the
balances in the rough mix were pretty decent, and their sketch was very distinctive, so I didnt have to do much in
terms of surgery.

2. YOURE ONLY HUMAN

As a fan I care more about how something makes me feel than technical perfection, any day. You want to be sure
every word/syllable gets heard, but you dont want points of emphasis in the performance to be subdued too much.
Theres Autotune on all the vocal tracks, because that has become part of her vocal sound. But in this case the tuning
is very minimal. If you bypassed it, youd hardly hear the difference. Its not there to create an effect, but just to keep
her vocals in place.

3. A MIX OF FRESH INGREDIENTS

Spend time capturing a good recording. Thats the key, really, to a good mix. Just like with cooking, your dish will
come out better if you have fresh ingredients.

4. DO EXPERIMENT
Finding the right EQ or compressor is a bit like finding the right mic for recording. That LA-2A you used and worked
great on the last song may not seem right on this one, for any number of reasons, the tempo and key of the song, for
example. I dont have specific settings I use on everything, unfortunately. I wish I did: everything would go so much
quicker! Instead, every setting in every mix is done on a case-by-case basis. I basically just adjust things until I think it
feels good. For some of the less experienced, consulting a frequency chart might not be a bad idea. Analysers can
help too, when trying to identify problem areas.

Mixers sit for hours every day in a room, and like to try new things, and with Diamonds, I tried the VintageMaker
summing box. It has 16 inputs, and I sent stereo pairs of drums, music, vocals and effects returns to the VintageMaker
from my Mitch Berger-modified Avid 192 I/O. The VintageMaker is passive and has no sound of its own, so to bring it
up to line level it needs to be sent through a stereo mic pre, which also adds some character. In this case I used my
two Neve 1079s, which went into my Manley limiter. From there the stereo mix went back in ProTools, coming up on
Track 3, on which I had the Waves S1 Stereo Imager to create a bit more space and width for the image, and the
Metric Halo ChannelStrip.

5. QING UP THE VOCAL

The EQ1B is the ProTools EQ, which just acts as a high-pass filter, taking out some messy rumble in the low end. I
also had the Waves SSL Channel.
6. FATTEN UP
The tracks at the bottom of the session are all vocal effects tracks, with a Waves Rverb, ProTools Extra Long Delay II,
Waves MetaFlanger, and two different Doublers, one acting more like a micro-pitch shifter. Their aim was to fatten the
vocal up a little bit.

7. DONT OVERCOMPRESS
Compression (in the conventional sense) lowers the loud parts and brings up the quiet parts, so if someone is singing
their heart out and the signal is overcompressed, what the performer is trying to communicate emotionally may not
come across. When some of the less desirable parts are really loud (breaths, esss, effs etc.) its not a bad idea to
check or re-tweak your settings.

I shy away from using too much compression on my tracks in general. The whole loudness war issue is a big issue,
and I find myself constantly fighting the rough mixes of the songs that I mix. What often happens is that rough mixes
are done late at night, after a days work, and the engineer brickwalls it and calls it a day. But often people get used to
hearing things in that way, and many record company executives think that something thats less loud is less good,
whereas in fact it can be better, because theres space in the track and it can breathe properly. The problem for me is
that I have to make sure that whatever I turn in is at least as loud as the rough mix, or maybe a little hotter.

I prefer not to handcuff the mastering engineer by giving him something thats so loud that he cant do anything with it.
I tend to send a version thats anything from 5-7dB quieter, giving him headroom to be able to do his thing. This can
vary per genre, and if its more of a clubby song where the low end needs to be really powerful, a limiter is part of the
sound. I still try to make sure that the mix does not fall apart without the limiter, and that the balances are intact and the
different parts of the song are doing their jobs, and the limiter basically enhances everything. In the case of Diamonds,
I sent both versions to the mastering engineer, Chris Gehringer, who mastered the entire Unapologetic album, so he
could do whatever he needed to do to make sure it fit in with the rest of the album.

Born in Malaysia, Tan graduated in 1990 from Floridas Full Sail education facility, and was given his big break by
rapper/producer Jermaine Dupri. Since then Tan has amassed credits like Mariah Carey, Usher, Justin Bieber, Whitney
Houston, Alicia Keys, Aretha Franklin, Outkast, Jay-Z and many others, and won three Grammy Awards as a mix
engineer on Mariah Careys album The Emancipation of Mimi (2005), Ludacriss album Release Therapy (2006), and
Rihannas Only Girl (In the World). A staggering eight of Rihannas 10 US number one hits were mixed by Tan.

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2 RESPONSES TO MIX MASTERS: POP VOCALS WITH PHIL TAN

Andy says:
February 12, 2014 at 12:39 pm

Actually, Sia Furler wrote the song Diamonds w/ Blanco/Stargate.

Reply

Wolf Media Group says:

February 24, 2014 at 3:45 pm

Great tips and great article!

Reply

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