Lead Vocal Levels in Pop Music

Across Acoustics

Is there an ideal level for lead vocals compared to accompaniment in popular music? Researchers at University of Oldenburg investigated this question by analyzing the Billboard Hot 100 year-end list from 1946 to 2020 as well as Grammy award nominees from 1990 to 2020. In this interview, author Kai Siedenburg discusses what his group learned about an important aspect of music mixing and the impact the research may have.

Associated paper: Karsten Gerdes and Kai Siedenburg. "Lead-vocal level in recordings of popular music 1946–2020.“ JASA Express Letters 3, 043201 (2023). http://doi.org/10.1121/10.0017773

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Music: Min 2019 by minwbu from Pixabay. https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=music&utm_content=1022