QandA – How to Produce Rap Music

Hey i do audio…and pretty decent at it if i sau so myself lolz..

n e wayz, i’m always learning new tricks when it comes to mixing and i was wondering if u have n e helpful tips with using reverb/compressor/and the equilizer….so yea what do say big guy? lol

Illbert Rhymestein
RapDogs.com

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Hi Illbert,

I remember you from the forums. Major props to you and the Rap Dogs community. I listened to one of our tracks on SoundClick – “12-SupaStarr”

First of all it was a good track and good recording. You can definately play that in your car with pride. I’m assuming you want to elevate your skillz so let’s look at it more critically – to get it from “good” to excellent. Could this track be on a major label release? Sure, that’s a loaded question – anything could be on a major label release depending on the context. But if I was producing it there are some things I would do to it. I don’t have a Grammy yet, so maybe my advice is jacked up. (Key part of that last sentence is “yet”). You read, you decide.

Brush up on Hertz. 20hz is the low low end – 20Khz is the upper end of human hearing. So we refer to low end as 20hz (low end 808) – 80hz (low end on lowfi audio system) – 80-160hz (bass guitar) etc….up to 1khz – 5-6khz (human voice clarity) to 10-12khz (hi hats, cymbals sizzle).

Check out this link for info about Hertz
Wikipedia article on Hertz audio spectrum

Ok, let’s start! I wish I was at a mixing board, because I could do all this faster than it takes to explain it.
DANCING FOR THE EARS
Most tracks I hear don’t “dance” for the ears. Usually there’s a soundtrack bed and then vocals over the top. But to be “excellent” the whole track should be one entity – track and the vocals should present a unified front. So most of what I’m going to write here are things you can do to make this happen. Music should delight the ears, should be like candy. With lots of little elements to keep the mind interested and engaged in the production.

VOCAL MIXING
You have two different takes of the lead vocals (two leads at different spoken pitches) which is cool. But both are EQ’d the same. Your lead vox is usually going to be mixed center, if they have the samej processing then both leads are taking up the same audio space. What about thinning one of the leads out, or what about recording THREE leads – One center and full, and two slightly left and right thinned out a bit. Or what about recording EIGHT tracks of lead and stacking them. A lot of the major labels do insane amounts of stacking – that “wall of sound” approach. There’s only so much room in the audio spectrum – so give your lead vocal it’s window – and then eq the support leads so they don’t interfere with that window. Example: Boost the lead at 5-6khz maybe 2.5 db, then LOWER the background vocals 5-6khz 2 db. That’s the general idea of creating a window in the audio spectrum. Of course you need to adjust this by ear. I will pan the audio around the general frequency I want to tweak, in this case I would listen to where the clearness of the sound “jumps out” a bit – that would be the frequency I want to hit in this situation.

BACKGROUND VOCALS
Are the background vocals eq’d, compressed and effected the same as the lead vocal. If so, was that your intent, or did it just happen that way? I like processing the background vocals different – usually thinning them a bit, experiment with panning (make sure it’s balanced unless you intentionally want it lopsided). I also like using entirely different fx on the bgv tracks. Especiallly in hip hop – it really helps accentuate the different between the verse and chorus. Sometimes I’ll take a bgv and totally thin it out with a low end shelf – maybe cut everything from 4khz and below out, then drench in a long verb. Can be very effective. As always, the context of the music depends on what will work and what won’t.

WORKING WITH A PREMIXED TRACK
Assuming your background track is premixed – for hip hop you especially want that low end bass and sizzling hi hat. Try a little boost around 20hz for the sub to rock in a good car system (also check out around 80-120hz, which is the low end of a semi-crappy audio system – mix for the bad systems too). Then check out the hi hat action from 10khz to 12 khz. Add a little sizzle up there if you can. Another trick is to add some sort of processing to both the vocals AND the track – a way to make them sound a bit more like they belong together. You could try a light verb with the low end rolled off (like even rolling below 600khz off on the reverb – you don’t want verb on your 808 kick, etc.)

WORKING WITH THE ORIGINAL TRACKS
If you have the original tracks to work with I could write a book on how to approach it. But the thing to keep in mind is that everything should work together – let the vocals have their own space, and give each instrumental track it’s own flavor to keep the ears dancing. Work with panning so there’s movement between the speakers, and make sure the individual tracks are not getting the in frequency or panning space of the vocals.

REVERBS ON VOCALS
Try using two verbs. A short verb that will thicken the front of the vocal without being blurry – like a vocal plate set at 20ms or lower – then add a long verb with a delayed attack, like 20ms delay on attack to strengthen the sustain of the vocal. Or try short and medium verb – idea is to get two different fx working in tandem with your vocal. In general I don’t like to “hear” fx – if you listen to a track and say “oh, that’s a long reverb” then it might be too much. Exception is when it’s intentional to be that way. So crank the fx, get it tweaked where you want it – then back off to where you don’t hear it. I didn’t hear too much fx on your track, so sounds like you already understand “less is more”.

STACK THOSE VOX TRACKS
I got to work on a preproduction project for Aftermath last year and had the opportunity to work on the original protools session on my own computer. Talk about stacking! Twenty tracks for the lead vocal alone – and this was just for the demo! It was that thick. Try going nuts and stacking the hell out of your vocals and see what you come up with.

COMPRESSOR AND LIMITER
Another trick is to run the lead vocal on it’s own limiter at -.01db of peak, and run the track at let’s say -.05db of peack. This means the vocal will always be at least .04db above the track, regardless of what’s happening with each. For compression you should decide how tight you want the vocal compressed – in general if you can hear the pumping of the compressor – it’s too much. On an overall track compression would be very light – let’s say 1.5db at 2:1 at peack – but vocal could easily be 6db at 4:1 at peak, and you could even compress the vocal more from there. My experience is that you can compress the spoken word much more than a sung vocal track.

Hope that info helps. Keep in touch.

Conrad