Natural Vocal Production

Dana Nielsen is a Grammy nominated mixer, engineer and producer. He’s worked with SZA, Rihanna, Post Malone, Neil Young, The Avett Brothers, Kanye West, Bob Dylan, and many more. He’s comped and tuned vocals using the exact process he shares in this course for artists such as Adele, Anderson .Paak, H.E.R., Black Sabbath, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Linkin Park, Sheryl Crow, Miley Cyrus, The Smashing Pumpkins, Weezer, Slayer, Justin Timberlake, and others.

In this class, Dana brings you into his home studio and teaches you his start-to-finish production process for comping, natural sounding tuning, and mixing a song written and performed by Nashville-based singer-songwriter, Josh Del. You’ll see Dana’s entire process from how he organizes raw vocal takes in his DAW all the way to his finished, mastered mix.  Throughout the course, Dana explains everything that he’s doing. Every idea, decision, tool, and technique is out in the open, on display for you to use in your own productions. He’ll show you how he edits to mask vocal bleed and how he comps between takes that weren’t recorded to a click. You’ll hear his thought process along the way as he decides which takes to use, and you’ll see how he tunes vocals so you can’t tell they’ve been tuned.

This course is mostly about listening and learning how to listen, whether you’re listening to individual takes in order to assemble a comp or – as Dana teaches in this course – listening from a new position in your room in order to broaden your perspective and focus on the bigger picture.

If you’re a recording artist, engineer, or producer who struggles with decision fatigue, this course can be transformative in helping you to make creative decisions with confidence. You’ll see Dana working in Pro Tools; however, the techniques taught in this course can be easily adapted to any DAW and any style of music.

In the final lesson, Dana shows you how he mixes and masters an acoustic singer-songwriter track and exports it for final delivery. By the end of the class, you’ll know everything you need to comp, tune, and mix vocal performances like a pro.