A cappella mixing
Mixing an Acappella vocal ( the vocal part of a track separated from any musical accompaniment ) over the beat of another record can be very effective in giving a well known song new context. You could try playing an a cappella version of an old disco or pop track over a modern house beat or an a cappella version of a well known rap over completely new beats to create your own bootleg
Be sure to choose the tracks you mix your a cappella over carfully. The vocal needs to fit the groove and sit harmoniously. If the vocal is out of tune with the other track it will sound awful. Make sure you experiment with what works well at home before you try it live. Get it right and the dance floor will love it !.
PRACTICE
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Choose an insturmental that fits your vocal well.
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Listen to the original of the vocal to find which beat of the bar the vocal starts on. A capppellas rarley start on the first beat of the bar, so generally you need to listen to the original to get the timing right. Count as you listen so you can work out which beat to drop mix the a cappella in.
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You will probably need to change the speed of the a capella during the mix. To do this use the pitch control rather than manipulate the record or jog wheel otherwise the dancefloor is likely to hear changes in the pitch to the vocal. Use the pitch control during quiet moments in the vocal.
There is more room for error when mixing a cappellas because there are no beats to clash, but this also makes it difficult to get the tempos right as there are no beats with which to judge each track. Its best to listen to the groove of the vocal by paying attention to how the vocalist begins and ends the words for each phrase. This will help you to keep the mix in time.
WHERE TO MIX
Domestic living rooms and bedrooms absorb quite a lot of sound because of the amouth of carpeting, curtains and soft furnishings usually present, but because we're used to listening to music under these conditions a studiowith a simiular acoustic characteristic makes a perfectly workable alternative to a purpose-built studio. Beacause no monitoring systems or rooms sound exactly alike it's important to compare mixes with commercial music played back over the same system in the smae room. Bedrooms or other domestic rooms with carpets and soft furnishings are perfectly adequate for mixing music demos and even some commercial projects. If the room seems too lively or reverberant, hanging rugs or heavy curtains on the rear wall and at either side of the mixing position often helps.
SPEAKERS
Speakers should be arranged so that they form two points of and equilateral triangle, with the listener at the apex, sitting at the mixing console. They should be angled inward so that they point directly at the listener's head, and they should be at around head height. You should avoid putting speakers in or close to corners, as this has an unpredictable effect on the sound of the bassend. You may seem to get more bass by doing this, but in reality you'll proberbly EQ your mix to compensate for it so that, when you play your songs back on another system they'll show the bass light
EFFECTS
Where conventional insturments are usually played in real acoustic spaces and to give them character, electronic instruments, or ' acousitc' sounds recorded in an acoustically 'dead' studio, usually rely on electronic effects to make them sound real and interesting. In todays MIDI studio many instruments, modules and soundcards come with their own effects, though if these are inadequate in any way then external effects may also be connected via a mixer. There are also software-based effects available, such as the VST plug-ins used with the leading MIDI-plus-audio sequencer. The basic princible is the same wherever your effects originate, however, and the next few pages describe the more common effects and their applications
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