Inside the “70s Tuxedo” session | The Truth In Print™ by Rach Society

When I mixed “70s Tuxedo,” I wanted you to feel like you’d walked into a party where everybody was celebrating something they were told they couldn’t do. I wanted the flow to take you on a ride, and I wanted you to catch the rhymes on the way. That meant getting my voice to sit inside the beat while keeping every word clear.

The beat had been sitting in the coffers for a while. It was dope when I first heard it, but I was deep into my version of trap music at the time. When I came back to it, I heard a chance to flex my lyrical muscles. Developing a rhyme takes work. I wanted that work to come through on the record.

I started with one stereo file

A two-track beat is a stereo bounce. The drums, bass, and instruments come together in one file. On this record, I ran that file through Logic Pro’s Stem Splitter and gain-staged the separated parts, in addition to some mixing and EQing. Sometimes the split introduces artifacts. I listen with everything playing together to judge whether they’re audible in the mix.

For my voice, the mids and highs are usually where I hear the competition. A boomy low end can overpower the whole record, but the midrange and highs are where I’m listening for the words to come through. Getting the beat and vocals gain-staged gave me a balance I could work from.

The vocal had to sound right coming in

I recorded with a Shure SM7B into the SSL 18. I used the mic’s high-frequency boost and had Legacy 4K and the low-cut filter engaged on the SSL. My voice is raspy, and what came through was clean and buttery. I could hear the way I pronounced each word. If I stumbled over a rhyme, I could hear that too.

I’d already found the pocket while practicing, which made recording easier than I expected. I built the Logic session to work like a 48-channel SSL console, with six buses plus effects sends and returns. I kept the mixing plugins bypassed while I tracked and started mixing after the vocals were recorded. During the mix, I checked in with Musik Hack Master Plan 2 to hear how the record might feel with mastering applied.

A beat should be a blank canvas for an artist to paint the picture. When the arrangement leaves room and I’ve got the delivery right, I can spend my time deciding what to bring forward.

I stacked the words I wanted you to catch

On “70s Tuxedo,” I picked out intricate words and phrases and gave them extra weight with unison doubles, triples, centered harmonies, and harmonies recorded four times. Some of that emphasis came from performances stacked in the center. Panning gave me a separate way to place voices around the lead.

On the chorus, I wanted a little softness against a hard record. I used Auto-Tune selectively, including on “I did everything they said I can’t,” and put a quarter-note delay on the last words of the bars. I liked both chorus versions on their own. What worked was combining the tuned vocal with the expressive take. I got the softness I was after and could still hear the feeling in the original delivery.

This clip starts at 0:29 in the full track. Listen to the lead vocal first, then notice which words the doubles and harmonies bring forward. Press play below. 👇

I knew it was ready when I kept playing it

I was up in the wee hours walking around the backyard with my Beats Studio headphones on, having a private concert. Of course, I put it on the big speakers at low volume too. The record kept pulling me back in, and I could still catch the delivery with the speakers turned down. That’s when I felt ready to bounce it for mastering.

If you’re mixing your first rap vocal over a stereo beat, play the whole song and listen for what’s missing. Is the lead hard to follow? Does a line need more emphasis? Does the performance itself need another take? Once you can name what you’re hearing, you’ll have a better idea which tool to reach for. And if the delivery needs work, get back on the mic. People will come back for the song.

Join The Society for more from The Truth In Print™ and get “Made In Memphis” free. Join The Society