In this four-part free video tutorial series, brought to you with the support of Waves, we show you a simple yet powerful workflow using four Waves plug-ins that you can use to quickly transform your vocal tracks into radio-ready top lines.

The recipe for getting a strong lead vocal in a mix is often simple, as demonstrated in the following four episodes:

Episode #1: Compression

Applying compression to a vocal is important for getting your vocals sat tastefully in a mix. Renaissance Vox is a popular plug-in for such applications as ratio and timing constraints are preset specifically for vocal mixing making it a simple plug-in to dial in right first time. All you need to concern yourself with when using Renaissance Vox is how much compression you want by adjusting the Comp fader.

Episode #2: Tuning

Pitch correction plug-ins help to tighten vocal performances with tuning issues. Some vocal performances often need slight adjustments in pitch in order to translate better in the mix or genre of production. There are many plug-ins offering pitch correction features. Some provide surgical tools based around piano roll style UIs, others, like Waves Tune Real-Time provides an automatic approach in which you set the song’s key and correction speed, along with other useful parameters and pitch correction is mostly set. In this episode you’ll learn how to use Waves Tune Real-Time

Episode #3: DeEssing

Sibilance is a common issue in vocal recordings, a harsh, fatiguing sound at the top end that can be difficult to fix without dulling a vocal. It’s an audio artefact that generally makes for uncomfortable listening experiences. Renaissance DeEsser is super simple to use and includes a handy display showing a more detailing representation of the processing in action.

We’ve looked at other Waves DeEsser plug-ins in detail that are also worth considering

• Sibilance In Vocal Tracks - Check Out 4 Waves DeEsser Plugins That Reduce Harshness

Episode #4: Delay

No radio ready top line vocal mix is complete without some form of ambience or delay effect around it. In this final episode we show you how we complete this mix with a level of delay using Waves SuperTap to help finalise the presentation of this voice. In this video we pay close attention to syncing the delays to the bpm of the song along with the amount of feedback to ensure we don’t muddy up the mix.