How To Mix Screaming / Growling Vocals in Reaper

Are your growling vocals sounding like crap? You've come to the right place.

Disclaimer: This is MY way of doing stuff. There are tons of other roads to follow, but this should help you out.

First off, you do NOT need a fancy microphone in order to record good sounding growling vocals. If you are on a budget, get a Behringer XM8500 or a similar SM58-knockoff. It sounds more than good enough for this.

1. Get a pop filter, or put a sock in front of your microphone.
2. Have your vocalist step back from the microphone. The proximity effect will mess up your vocals on dynamic microphones especially.
3. Dont bother treating your room acoustically, it won't do much for what we're doing here. I have recorded like this in acoustically horrible rooms with no problems.
4. Make your vocalist wear headphones, dont use speakers, because they will blend in with the recorded vocals and create lots of mess.

When you have happily recorded your vocals, it's time to make what sounds like shit sound good. First off, put a limiter on your vocal track. I'm using the W1 limiter in my video here, which you can easily find by googling. When you have set your threshold and ceiling to your liking, move on to adding a de-esser. Find the annoying S-frequencies and kill them. Add delay or reverb; I hate reverb, so I mostly use delay. Make the delay sound over-the-top when soloing the vocals, your won't hear your delay as well in the finaly mix anyways. Finally, add an EQ and cut the frequencies below approx. 40hz, in order to avoid any problems with runaway bass frequencies from the vocals.

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I own everything in my backing track / instructional / original song videos, including the audio recordings, editing and photography used. All software used has been purchased legally.

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