How to mix rap vocals

The order we start from on a rap vocal. Settings change with every voice and every beat.

Rap vocals carry the song. The beat is often sparse, the words matter more than the melody, and the listener notices straight away if a line gets lost. Modern rap is also heavily processed: tuned, saturated, layered and thrown around with effects. So there’s no single correct chain, but there is an order that works on most vocals. Below is the one we use, with settings to start from.

This guide is about the lead vocal. For the beat, the 808 and the loudness of the finished track, see our hip-hop mixing and mastering guide. For vocals in any genre, start with how to mix a vocal.

Clean and prepare the rap vocal

A rap vocal will be compressed hard later, and compression brings up everything quiet: breaths, mouth clicks, headphone bleed, room noise. Clean it before any processing.

• Backing vocals and doubles: remove breaths and noise between phrases completely. Several layers of breathing add up fast.
• Lead vocal: some breaths are part of the delivery. Cut them out and move them to a separate track, so you can set their level on their own.
• Timing: doubles should land with the lead on the consonants. If they flam, edit them now. EQ won’t fix it.
• High-pass filter on every vocal track. There’s very little useful vocal energy below about 100 Hz, and what’s there clashes with the 808. Set it by ear: higher on a thin voice is fine, lower on a deep one.

EQ for rap vocals

Rap vocals are usually mixed bright, so most of the time the EQ adds top end for clarity. A Neve 1073-style EQ is a common choice, as hardware or as a plugin (UAD makes one), because its high shelf adds air without much edge.

The cut matters as much as the boost. Most voices have a boxy or muddy area in the low mids. Sweep a narrow boost to find it, then cut it a few dB. If the vocal still disappears into the beat, the fix is often in the beat, not the vocal: a small dip in the instrumental where the vocal’s presence lives does more than another boost on the voice.

De-essers and de-harshers

We put the de-esser after the EQ and before the main compression. A brighter EQ makes the “s” and “t” sounds louder, and a compressor with makeup gain raises them further relative to the vowels. Catching them first gives the compressor a cleaner signal. If sibilance comes back after the compressor, a second, lighter de-esser at the end of the chain is normal.

For harshness that isn’t sibilance, like a sharp upper-mid ring on loud words, a resonance suppressor or dynamic EQ works better than a static cut. Our favourites are oeksound Soothe and TBProAudio DSEQ. Both can also de-ess. Two or three dB of reduction is usually enough. More than that and the vocal starts to sound lispy.

Multiband compression, only when needed

A well-recorded vocal rarely needs it. But many rap vocals arrive recorded at home, with resonances, a voice that changes tone between quiet and loud lines, or a booming low end on some words. A multiband compressor or dynamic EQ evens that out, so the tone stays the same across the whole song. Use it to fix a problem you can hear, not by default.

Compression for rap vocals

Rap delivery jumps in level within a single bar, and the vocal has to stay readable over a loud beat. That takes more compression than most genres, split across two stages:

• A fast compressor for peaks. An 1176-style FET with a fast attack and fast release, ratio 4:1 for control or 8:1 when you want more bite, catching 3–10 dB on the loudest words. “All buttons” mode adds crunch and distortion when that is the sound you want.
• A slower compressor for level. An optical compressor like the Tube-Tech CL 1B, working gently, smooths the overall level and adds some colour. Some engineers put it first, some second. Try both.
• Automation last. Ride the words that still drop out. Compression gets you most of the way, but a fader ride on one quiet word sounds more natural than another 5 dB of gain reduction.

Release time follows the tempo. Our guide to compressor attack and release times has a BPM table.

Do rap vocals need reverb?

Yes, almost always, even when the vocal sounds dry. Vocals are recorded in a treated room or a booth, so they arrive with no room sound at all, which sounds unnatural next to a beat. The trick is to add space without moving the vocal back.

• Short room or plate, low in level. Enough to glue the voice to the beat. You should miss it when you mute it, not hear it when it’s on.
• Pre-delay. A few dozen milliseconds of pre-delay separates the reverb from the word, so the voice stays upfront and the reverb sits behind it.
• Delays instead of long reverb. A short slap or a quarter- or eighth-note delay, filtered and quiet, gives depth without wash.
• Throws as effects. A long reverb or delay on the last word of a line, automated in and out, is where the creative part happens.

Doubles, ad-libs and creative effects

Doubles thicken the lead on chosen words or whole lines. Keep them quieter than the lead and tight in timing, and pan pairs left and right. Ad-libs go on their own bus, lower and wider, often darker and with more effects than the lead. If you can follow every ad-lib clearly, they’re probably too loud.

Auto-Tune is part of the sound in a lot of modern rap, either as light correction or as an obvious effect. If you’re new to it, read Melodyne vs Auto-Tune: Which is better? and How to use Auto-Tune as a Pro. Beyond that, filters, distortion, pitch shifts and stutter edits on single words are all fair game. Automate them so they happen on purpose, not across the whole song.

How loud should rap vocals be in a mix?

Loud enough that every word reads at low playback volume, without the beat collapsing underneath. In most rap the vocal sits on top of the beat, more forward than in rock or many pop mixes. The practical way to judge it is a reference: pick a released track in the same style, match its loudness to your mix so you compare balance and not volume, and switch between them. Then check on headphones, a phone speaker and in the car. If a line disappears on one of them, fix that line.

Practice mix or a release?

Everything above is a good way to learn and to get a solid mix at home. If the track is going out to compete on streaming, it’s worth a second pair of ears. You can hear a rap before/after on our homepage samples, and send the session for mixing and mastering whenever you’re ready.

If the vocal needs more than a plugin, our manual vocal editing (Melodyne, by hand) starts at $57 per song, and online mixing from $113.