Hello! Welcome back to your vocal mixing module.
In our last lesson, we gave our vocal a sense of space and dimension using reverb and delay. We learned how to use send tracks, sculpt the effects with EQ, and use sidechain compression ("ducking") to maintain clarity. The vocal is now clean, controlled, and sits in a convincing acoustic environment.
But a song is a dynamic performance, not a static snapshot. A vocalist might whisper one line and belt the next. If our mix levels stay the same, quiet words can get lost and loud words can become overpowering.
Today's lesson addresses this directly. Our goal is to use automation to ensure the lead vocal remains present and intelligible throughout the entire mix. This is the final step in our lead vocal processing chain and is one of the most crucial skills for creating a polished, professional sound. Since you're comfortable in FL Studio, we'll focus on the exact hands-on techniques you can apply right away.
1. What is Automation and Why Use It for Vocals?
At its core, automation is the process of programming changes to any parameter in your mix over time. Instead of setting a volume fader and leaving it, you can make it rise during the chorus, dip during a quiet bridge, and subtly adjust itself word-by-word.
For vocals, this is an indispensable tool. While compression helps to even out dynamics, it's a reactive process. Automation is a proactive one. You, the engineer, make conscious decisions about how loud every single syllable should be. This manual process is often called "vocal riding."
What is automation in mixing? - Wisseloord
To understand the importance of this technique, let's read a short article from Wisseloord studios that explains why automation is so fundamental to modern mixing.
Read the sections titled 'What exactly is automation in mixing and why does it matter?' and 'Which mixing tasks benefit most from automation?'. Focus on how automation makes a mix feel 'alive' and specifically on the description of 'vocal rides' for maintaining clarity.
As the article mentions, vocal riding is one of the most common and important uses of automation. It allows you to achieve perfect intelligibility, ensuring the listener can connect with every word of the performance.
2. The Two Stages of Vocal Automation
Think of vocal automation in two stages, each with a different purpose.
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Corrective Gain Automation (Pre-Processing): The goal here is to level out the raw vocal performance before it hits your main processors like EQ and compression. By manually turning down loud phrases and turning up quiet ones, you create a more consistent signal. This allows your compressor to work more subtly and transparently, as it isn't being forced to react to huge changes in volume. This is the secret to avoiding "over-compressed" vocals.
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Creative Volume Automation (Post-Processing): After all your EQs, compressors, and effects are in place, you do a final pass of automation on the main volume fader. This is less about correction and more about emotion and emphasis. You can push the energy of the chorus, make the vocal swell into a reverb tail, or add emphasis to a single, powerful word.
For today's lesson, we will focus entirely on Corrective Gain Automation, as it's the foundational technique for ensuring vocal presence.
How to ACTUALLY Mix Vocals (15 Easy Steps)
The article 'How to ACTUALLY Mix Vocals' from Mastering.com has an excellent section explaining this pre-processing automation workflow. It calls it 'The Secret Sauce'.
Read 'Step 3: Gain Automation (The Secret Sauce)'. Pay close attention to the idea of automating the gain at the beginning of the channel to make the compressor's job easier.
3. Practical Workflow: Vocal Riding in FL Studio
Now, let's get hands-on. We're going to build a vocal automation workflow in FL Studio step-by-step. The best practice is to not automate the main mixer fader for this corrective stage. Instead, we'll use a simple gain plugin, leaving the fader free for overall mix balancing later. In FL Studio, the perfect tool for this is Fruity Balance.
The following video tutorial provides a complete, practical guide to this process. We will walk through it together.
Step 1: Setting Up for Automation
First, we need to add Fruity Balance to our vocal track and create the automation clip.
Vocal Automation Tutorial | FL Studio 20
This video, 'Vocal Automation Tutorial | FL Studio 20' by Jon Audio, demonstrates the professional workflow we've just discussed. Let's watch the initial setup.
Watch from 00:26 to 03:30. Notice how he places Fruity Balance first in the effects chain and creates an automation clip for its volume knob. He also sets the min/max range for the automation, which gives you finer control.
Step 2: Drawing the Automation
This is where the real work happens. You'll listen through the vocal part phrase by phrase and draw in automation points to adjust the gain. The goal is to make every word sound equally present.
Vocal Automation Tutorial | FL Studio 20
Now for the main event. Let's watch the process of manually drawing in the automation points.
Watch from 03:30 to 07:32. The key takeaways here are: Right-click + Shift to add a new point without changing the line's current value. Using the 'Hold' point type creates instant 'stepped' changes, which is great for detailed, word-by-word adjustments. Listen, adjust, and listen again. This is an ear-training exercise as much as it is a technical one.
Test your understanding!
You're working on a vocal where the singer whispers the first half of a line and shouts the second half. When you apply a compressor, it either ignores the whisper or completely squashes the shout.
How would you use the gain automation technique we just learned to solve this problem before the signal even reaches the compressor?
Show answer
You would use a gain plugin (like Fruity Balance) at the start of your effects chain. Then, you would create an automation clip for its volume and draw in automation to:
- Increase the gain during the whispered section.
- Decrease the gain during the shouted section.
This way, both parts of the line will have a much more consistent volume before they hit the compressor, allowing the compressor to work more smoothly and transparently on the overall performance.
Step 3: Smoothing and Finalizing
Sometimes, very sharp and sudden automation changes can cause audible clicks or pops. FL Studio has a built-in feature to subtly smooth these transitions without undoing your hard work.
Vocal Automation Tutorial | FL Studio 20
Finally, let's look at a small but important refinement to make our automation sound completely transparent.
Watch from 07:32 to 09:50. See how he uses the 'Smooth up' tool in the articulator settings to add tiny fades to the automation points. This is a pro-level finishing touch that prevents artifacts.
By following this process, you are essentially doing the heavy lifting of dynamic control by hand. Your compressor's job becomes much easier—it's now just adding a final layer of glue and consistency rather than fighting a wildly dynamic signal.
Conclusion
Congratulations, you've now completed the entire vocal processing chain for a modern lead vocal! From editing and tuning to dynamics and effects, and now to final automation, you have the full toolset to take a raw vocal recording and make it sit perfectly in a professional mix.
Key Takeaways:
- Automation is proactive control. It allows you to make precise, intentional changes to ensure your vocal is always heard.
- The "vocal riding" technique is essential for ensuring intelligibility and presence word by word.
- A key professional workflow is to use gain automation before your compressor to even out the signal, making the compression more transparent.
- In FL Studio, use Fruity Balance for corrective gain automation, leaving your main channel fader free for overall mix balancing.
Preview of Next Lesson:
With our lead vocal now sounding polished and professional, it's time to turn our attention to the rest of the track. A great vocal needs a great instrumental to support it. In the next module, we'll begin mixing the instrumental, starting with the foundation of modern music: the rhythm section. We'll learn how to apply EQ and compression to a kick drum and snare to achieve punch, snap, and body.