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• Mixcraft Rap Vocals Plugin
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It fills in some gaps in the Mixcraft Recording Studio bundled FX like a Gate, De-Esser, Auto Pan, Ring Modulator, and Signal Generator, and if you want to run the 64-bit version of Mixcraft, this can help reduce your need for the built-in 32-64 plug-in wrapper.

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If I had to pick the most frequent question I get asked on a regular basis it would have to be “how do I mix rap vocals?” Or some variation thereof. At least once a week if not more.

I mix a new rap vocal four or five times a week — much more if you count different rappers on the same song. I have developed an approach — sort of a formula to create a formula. In truth, we know that all songs, vocals, captures, and performances are different. There can never be one formula to mix all vocals effectively, and there are many approaches to conceptualizing a vocal treatment. Mine is just one of many.

The Concept

It all starts with the concept. I say this time and time again, and it only gets more true as I say it: in order to mix anything, you need an end game. There has to be some kind of idea of where the vocal is going to go before you start getting it there. That idea can and probably will change along the way, but there has to be some direction or else why do anything at all.

The big problem most people have with mixing rap vocals is that they think of the word “vocals” without considering the word “rap.” Rap is supremely general — there are big differences between 1994 NY style rap vocals and 2010 LA style rap vocals.

Even within that you have A Tribe Called Quest – “1nce Again” vs. LL Cool J – “Loungin'”. Both are laid back smoother rap songs, but the mixing is totally different (compare below).

Loungin’ is a quintessential Bad Boy style sound, mixed by Rich Travali. You can hear the similarities between that and 112, Total, Mariah Carey and later Biggie tracks.

1nce Again is a prime example of a Bob Power mix — a sound which pretty much dominated early NY rap.

I bring up this distinction because I hope you’ll compare the two. Notice how in Loungin’ the vocals are up in the mix — level with the snare — and have a “shiny” and smooth top end, great clarity and a really open yet detailed upper midrange.

Meanwhile in 1nce again, the vocals are just under the snare and have an extremely forward and aggressive mid-range, a grittier rolled off top end, and a steep hi-pass filter on the low end.

The shape of the vocal is also different — the compression is much easier on Loungin, and again, very aggressive on 1nce Again (particularly Phife’s voice).

Let’s take a more modern track, say Nicki Minaj’s “Massive Attack.”

Here you have super clear presence and treble in the vocals, the vocals are up in the mix, and there isn’t as much lower midrange as, say, “Loungin.”

Each of the 3 examples does something very specific:

• “1nce Again” is edgy and aggressive sounding — quintessential to the early NY sound, and rap’s image at the time.
• “Loungin'” is very intimate and smooth — it’s almost like an R&B song sonically.
• “Massive Attack” has the vocals clear as crystal, but leaves plenty of room for the low range drums to dominate the mix — which is good for clubs.

The point is, the what and why are just as important as the how when it comes to mixing vocals. Who is the artist’s audience, what is the artist’s style, where is the song being played, and what can you as the engineer do to encapsulate that?

So you’ve determined what you want… but how do you get there?

The Cleanup

Before mixing, many rap vocals need a bit of cleaning. There are many common issues.

One of the most common is the vocals were recorded in an unideal location, such as a closet (I get that one all the time) or a bathroom. I know it sounds weird but the myth has gone around that recording in a closet or a bathroom is a good idea. Generally speaking, it’s not.

The other common issue is the vocals were recorded too hot. Again, a myth has seemed to perpetuate that it’s a good idea to record the signal as loud as possibly. This is totally untrue, particularly in the age of 24-bit audio.

Cleaning up is a little rough at times because the scope of what you can do is limited. For audio that came in too hot — i.e., is clipping — distortion removal software such as iZotope’s Rx De-Clipper is ideal.

Also, that distortion will create frequency center resonances, which can be eased off with an EQ.

For vocals tracked in a reverberant space, subtle gating, and careful EQ can suppress the room sound — or you can use software like SPL De-Verb. The other option is to mix the track in a way that makes the reverb appear deliberate.

For vocals tracked in closets or corners, the issue will be comb filtering.

One trick for easing off comb filtering is if there are doubles of the vocal, pitch shift them up or down a slight amount. This will change the frequency bands that are being filtered, so that when layered with the main vocal, the same bands will not be missing all across the board. The backups will “fill in” the missing bands. The comb filtering will still be there, but it won’t be as readily apparent.

Processing

Now you have the vocals clean (or maybe they came in clean to begin with). It’s time to decide what to do with them.

Now, I can’t write how you should or should not process your vocals, but I can give you some things to consider and think about.

Balance

Figuring out the relationship between the vocals and other instruments in the same frequency range is extremely important.

Quintessentially, Hip-Hop is all about the relationship between the vocals and the drums. The number one contestant with the voice is the snare. Finding a way to make both the vocals and the snare prominent without stepping on each other will make the rest of the mix fall nicely into place.

In “1nce Again,” you’ll notice that the snare is a little louder than the vocals, and seems to be concentrated into the brighter area of the frequency spectrum, while the vocals are just an inch down, and living more in the midrange. This was a conscious decision made in the mix. But mixes like Loungin’ have the vocals on par with the snare. And Massive Attack has the vocals up — but it’s not really a snare, it’s a percussive instrument holding down the 2 and 4 that lives primarily in the lower-mid region.

“Air”

Hip-Hop vocals generally do not have much in the way of reverb.

There are primarily three reasons for this:

1. Rap vocals tend to move faster and hold more of a rhythmic function than sung vocals — long reverb tails can blur the rhythm and articulation.
2. The idea of Hip-Hop is to be “up front and in your face,” whereas reverb tends to sink things back in the stereo field.
3. Everyone else is mixing their vocals that way. Not a good reason, but kind of true.

However, vocals usually do benefit from sense of 3-D sculpting, or “air.” A sense of space around the vocals that make them more lively and vivid. Very short, wide, quiet reverb can really do the trick here.

Another good thing to try is using delay (echo), and pushing the delay way in the background, with a lot of high-end rolled off. This creates the sense of a very deep three dimensional space, which by contrast makes the vocal seem even more forward.

Lastly, if you are in a good tracking situation, carefully bringing out the natural space of the tracking room can be a good way to get super dry vocals with a sense of air around them.

Compression with a very slow attack, and relatively quick release, and a boost to the super-treble range can often bring out the natural air.

Shape & Consistency

A little compression is often nice on vocals, just to sit them into a mix and add a little tone.

On a sparse mix, a little dab’ll do ya. The most common mistake people make when processing vocals for Hip-Hop is over-compressing. High levels of compression is really only beneficial to a mix when there is a lot of stuff fighting for sonic space. When you read about rapper’s vocals going through four compressors and really getting squeezed it’s probably because there are tons of things already going on in the mix, and the compression is necessary for the vocals to cut through. Or because it’s a stylistic choice to really crunch the vocals.

Filtering

What’s going on around the voice is just as important to the vocals as the vocals themselves. Carefully picking what to get rid of to help the vocals along is very important. For example, most engineers high-pass filter almost everything except the kick and bass. That clears up room for the low information. But often the importance of low-pass filtering is overlooked. Synths, even bass synths, can have a lot of high-end information that is just not necessary to the mix and leave the “air” range around the vocals feeling choked.

A couple of well placed low-passes could very well bring your vocals to life.

Also, back to the subject of high-passing, unless you are doing the heavy handed Bob Power thing, you really don’t need to be hard high-passing your vocals at 120 Hz. The human voice, male and female, has chest resonance that goes down to 80 Hz (and even under sometimes). Try a gentle high-pass filter at around 70 or 80 Hz to start with if you’re just clearing up the vocals. Or maybe don’t high-pass at all …

Presence

Deciding where the vocal lives frequency-wise is important. Mid-sounding, “telephonic” vocals can be cool at times, low-mid “warm” sounding vocals certainly have their place. Commonly, the practice is to hype the natural presence of the vocals by getting rid of the “throat” tones and proximity buildup which generally live around the 250-600 Hz range (but don’t mix by numbers, listen, listen, listen). This in turn exaggerates the chest sound and head sound — particularly the sounds that form at the front of the mouth, tongue, and teeth — these are the tones that we use to pronounce our words and generally live in the upper midrange (2k-5k, no numbers, listen listen listen).

In Mixing Rap Vocals – Part 2 we discuss EQ techniques for getting the sound you want.

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Autotune has become ubiquitous across many modern genres of music – it’s certainly not confined to just pop music anymore. Popularised by Daft Punk, The Black Eyed Peas, Chris Brown, Rihanna and even Cher, autotune has become a vital component of modern record production.

Autotune is both a corrective and creative tool. While many vocalists would prefer for their voice to be autotuned naturally, we’re all familiar with the over-the-top autotune tone of many pop vocalists. Whatever your opinion is of autotune, it’s come along way over the last 10 or so years and is here to stay. Also, the fact is, autotune has so many practical uses that apply not just to vocals but other acoustic sources, too.

If you want to experiment with autotune and implement it as in your music software arsenal, then there are several excellent free autotune plugins available for you to download today.

Many are feature-rich and will offer great scope and functionality for trying out autotuning on vocals and other instruments. We think you’ll be surprised.

Before moving onto the list, let’s briefly cover how an autotune works and what sort of results you can expect.

The Modern Era of Autotune

Autotune is a valuable component of any producer or mix engineer’s VSTs and plugins. The days are gone where artists were scrutinised for their use of autotune and artists such as T-Pain have shaken the view that autotuned artists aren’t skilled vocalists.

Obviously, particular styles of creative autotune aren’t everyone’s cup of tea but autotune has uses outside of vocal pitch correction – they can also be used on synth patches, acoustic instruments, drums and almost any other sound with varying degrees of effectiveness. Many engineers might use autotune to alter the pitch of a few bum-notes that stick out in a guitar solo, for example.

It’s worth experimenting with autotune on both vocals and acoustic instruments as it can allow you to tighten the tonality of your performances.

What Makes an Autotune?

Most autotunes are designed for the voice’s frequency range but they’ll work on other acoustic sources like guitars with varying results.

Most autotunes are simply designed for minor pitch correction. They usually feature transparent audio engines which attempt to effect the voice in the least way possible for more natural results.

Contrastingly, some autotunes produce very overt and obvious changes that can help you create digitised vocals or pitch-shifting FX on other acoustic or electronic sources. For example, you could take a monotonal vocal and pitch it around for all manner of dramatic autotuned effects.

This autotune style is more commonly used in trap, hip-hop, rap and other electronic genres.

How and When to Use an Autotune Plugin

It’s rare that you’d use an autotune harshly on a whole track and instead, you’d most likely use it to address small problematic areas of a recorded waveform. Depending on your vocal, though, you could set-and-forget an autotune to tighten up elements of a whole vocal part. Experimentation is the key here.

Sometimes, you’ll be able to draw in the notes you want to correct to on a piano roll and pitch a sound around with formant control, other assorted fx and MIDI input control.

The problem is, autotune plugins have never really had a reputation for being cheap. Plugins like Melodyne can set you back hundreds of dollars. Whilst their high price is testament to how powerful they are, you can achieve professional results with free VST autotune plugins.

Here, we have 7 of the best free VST plugins available to download today.

1. MAuto Pitch

MeldaProduction has an illustrious history with the support of artists like Deadmau5. They’ve built a completely free and well-featured autotune plug-in and it really is a powerful bit of free kit.

The plug-in concentrates on the basics featuring depth, speed and detune controls. Still, it’s more fully featured than most autotunes on this list and with a modern interface, it’s definitely one of those plugins that makes you think “wow, it’s cool that I didn’t have to pay for this!”

MAuto Pitch has all of an autotune’s traditional controls. Depth essentially controls the depth of the effect – so the level of how much effect the plug-in has on the entire sound. Detune can be used to nudge the pitch up and down for fine tuning.

The speed knob is particularly important and this controls the speed of the autotune effect. Often, singer can hit the note but can’t sustain it. In this situation, it’s best to choose a slower speed so the autotune effect pulls in when the singer’s note begins to wander off.

For a more overt T-Pain-esque style tone, a quick speed setting is necessary so the autotune is immediately noticeable.

This awesome plugin also contains a lot of extra features like the width setting which can widen and stereoize your vocal. Finally, the formant setting can alter the pitch of your vocal in a way which makes it sound more masculine and deep or higher and feminine.

This autotune is equipped with a visual detector which provides a graphical interpretation of incoming notes. It’s all pretty sophisticated but it’s certainly not difficult to use!

2. GSnap

You only have to glance at this autotune to tell that it features a bit of an old-school interface by today’s standards.

Still, at the time it was a real groundbreaker and holds its own against all of the most expensive big boys and newer kids on the block.

This plugin’s MIDI functionality is superb. This means you can use a MIDI keyboard to play in the notes which you need to hit with the vocal part. You can then use this MIDI information to tune the vocal part.

GSnap’s interface is easy to use and the left-hand graphic will display your note’s pitch in red and the corrected version in green. This enables you to fine tune the corrected notes based on the information displayed.

Effects additional to your usual autotune effects include vibrato which is speed adjustable. This will add a fluttering effect to your vocal part. Other functions include a gate setting which can be used to control if the plugin effects just quiet or loud parts of a vocal part. For example, you could only autotune a loud chorus and choose to leave a quieter, more intimate verse unaffected.

Overall, GSnap is a finely crafted autotune tool which is capable of transparent results. Extra features like vibrato can really liven up a flat vocal sound.

3. Graillon 2

This recently released autotune looks a little different to most on this list. It has a greater number of quirky settings and fx and a rather futuristic-come-retro design.

Below its rather funky surface, this is a powerful autotune device. The correction module is the main component and by inserting this in an audio track and switching this on, you can get pretty good results for slightly out-of-tune tracks almost immediately. Inertia works as a speed control, controlling how quickly the autotune acts on a signal. The smooth control can help slow or quicken the transition between one note to another.

Some of the Graillon 2’s funky settings include the bitcrusher which can distort a voice with digital distortion that varies from subtle to outrageous. It’s pretty cool that Auburn decided to throw this into a free autotune plugin.

You can create some fascinating results with this free autotune that range from wispy digitised tones to full-on bitcrushed robotic voices. You can pitch shift to different pitches and octaves and alter the formant controls to change the tone of a vocal or instrument track.

Overall, this plugin really rocks! It has a sleek and modern interface and extra settings that might surprise you for a free plugin.

4. KeroVee

Japan audio company g200kg developed this autotune back in 2010. Today, it holds its own as a highly effective and fully functional free autotune VST.

This plugin has no flashy fx and its interface is more functional than attractive. Beneath its industrial-looking skin lies an ultra-intelligent autotune that can is capable of ultra-precise tunng.

The interface displays graphical info about a sound, including what it started as and what its autotuned version looks like. You can select the relative note which you want the plugin to tune to and with the calib setting you can adjust the overall pitch of your recording.

With many fine tuning controls including formant control, the KeroVee offers an array of more in-depth options than most other free autotunes. It has a unique nuance setting which can allow you to leave natural variations in a singers’ voice like vibrato.

This plugin doesn’t have flashy FX banks or many advanced controls but what it lacks in functionality it makes up for in precision. It’s clear that most of the programming work has gone into making a transparent-sounding autotune that can naturally tighten a vocal.

5. X42 Autotune

This plugin sports a rather inauspicious early-2000s looking interface but it’s very capable of fixing slightly out of tune vocals without much hassle.

Mixcraft Rap Vocals Plugin

It works via resampling and therefore, it’s not possible to transpose audio and harshly affect its pitch. This also means that you can’t alter a sound’s formants. Still, this plugin is designed for easily fixing a vocal part and that’s ultimately what it excels at.

Unique to this plugin is its bias and offset features which both give you the ability to retain some natural characteristics in your recorded voice. Bias keeps a note natural if the singer deliberately alters the pitch of its sustain and offset adjusts how far a vocalist can stray from inputted notes before the plugin kicks in.

With its MIDI input, you can assign the notes you want to correct your vocal to with your keyboard.

This plugin is one of the most dated in the list but with MIDI and audio sidechain inputs and a host of extra features, it definitely brings some of the best functionality to the autotunes in this list.

6. Autotalent

Autotalent’s interface will put many off from the get-go but it was originally manufactured by the wonderfully talented engineer Tom Baran before being reprogrammed for VST/AU by Oli Larkin – this honestly is one of the best autotune VSTs in the world.

Scraping below the surface of this industrious-looking plugin reveals its wealth of features. You can use it for anything ranging from light tuning and correction to full-blown robotic mashes and chiptune-style effects.

When setting this plugin up, you want to exclude notes in the scale with a “-1” and leave notes that you want to correct to with a “0”. Once you’ve found your way round its basic effects, it’s easy to start experimenting with its advanced settings and FX.

The LFO section of this plugin can generate some incredible sounding effects and combined with its vibrato control, you can really add life to a vocal performance or acoustic instrument.

Further than that, you can use its LFO feature to generate bit-mashed or chiptune effects.

Mixcraft Rap Vocals App

With lots of extra controls including formant controls, this plugin offers a really high-level of corrective and creative effects. If you can get below its rather crude surface, it can serve you for almost any auto-tuning and pitch shifting purpose.

7. AAS Autotune

This autotune has no GUI! That means it has no interface at all. Yep, you’re right in thinking that you just set this on a track and leave it – it’s invisible.

Mixcraft Rap Vocals Music

Manufactured a while ago by Arguru, this autotune pushes sounds pretty hard to get that T-Pain or Chris Brown style autotune.

Since you just set it and forget it, this plugin is very simple to use and sometimes it’s just right. It’s always worth trying out if you want a digitised hip-hop, trap or other EDM-driven vocal sound.

It’s extremely lightweight, easy to use (obviously) and it provides results – what more can you ask for?

Conclusion

So there we have 7 of today’s best free autotune plugins – if you were thinking you probably needed to fork out $$$ for an expensive autotune plugin then hopefully you’re relieved!

Mixcraft Rap Vocals Download

Autotune is here to stay and we all know it! Of course, not every genre needs autotuned vocals but it’s generally agreed amongst even veteran engineers that most vocal parts benefit from just a bit of autotune tightening.

Autotune can be used creatively as well as correctively. Autotune can help you fatten up a vocal sound, improving its impact, sustain and vibrato. Because of the power autotune can bring to a vocal, we’re used to hearing strongly autotuned vocals in many tracks across genres of EDM, hip-hop and pop music but though many engineers wouldn’t like to admit it, it’s used lightly in jazz, blues and even classical music.

Autotune has become an important component of the mixing process and therefore, you may as well embrace the change and equip your DAW with some of these awesome free autotune plugins!

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