Mula B-Style Vocals in FL Studio: Raw, Full and Punchy

Mula B raps like he has something to prove. Hard bars over fast trap beats, raw punchlines and hooks that stay in your head after one listen. You can hear that hunger in the voice itself too: full, close and no frills.

Want that energy on your own track in FL Studio? Then it comes down to two things that easily get in each other's way: body and clarity. This guide is about keeping a voice full while it still cuts through a heavy beat.

Full is not the same as heavy

Put on a few of his 101Barz sessions and focus on the voice, not the lyrics.

• Body in the low mids. The voice has weight, you feel it in your chest. Still, it's not bass and it never gets boomy.
• Fast compression. Every attack gets caught right away. That keeps the vocal tight, even when the flow goes all over the place.
• Solid punch. Consonants hit hard. That's what makes each punchline sharp enough to rise above the drums.
• Left raw. Nothing is smoothed over. A bit of grit in the voice is part of it.

The same dry rap vocal: first without a preset, then with the Mula B Type preset. Turn your sound on.

Your voice against the 808

With this sound, the biggest problem usually isn't your voice. It's the beat underneath. A full vocal and a heavy 808 both want the same slice of the low mids. Stack them without thinking and your words vanish right when the 808 hits.

Here's a quick check: play your mix on your phone speaker, then on earbuds. Do certain words drop out as soon as the bass comes in? Then your vocal isn't too quiet. Your voice and the bass are fighting over the same space. Turning up won't fix that. The tone has to change.

In broad strokes it goes like this: clean up the lows where your voice has no business, shape the body that should stay, compress fast and firm, and add presence so the words rise above the beat. All with the stock plugins in FL Studio Signature. How much body you can keep before it turns to mud, and how much presence you can add before it starts yelling, is the hard part. That's where the hours went, and that ratio of body to bite is what's saved in the preset.

Record with hunger

A raw vocal starts with a raw take. No chain turns a lazy recording into a hungry one.

• Hit the first syllable of every bar with intent. That attack is where the punch comes from.
• Don't swallow the ends of your words. On fast trap beats the endings are the first thing to disappear, and then nobody hears your punchline.
• Record your verse in chunks of a few bars. That keeps your energy as high at the end as it was at the start.
• Warm up by rapping the verse out loud once before you record. The first take is often still stiff.
• Leave a little grit in. A take that's too clean doesn't fit this sound.

Hooks that stick

The verse stays raw and single, the hook can go bigger. Record the hook two or three times and put the extra takes on the backing vocal preset, a bit quieter behind your lead. Use the ad-lib preset with the phone effect for short shouts between the lines. That gives the hook movement without your lead losing its spot.

Singing the hook? Use the melodic lead, which uses Pitcher for the autotune effect. Set Pitcher to the key of your beat. You can find the key in seconds with the free Beat Lab, and our Pitcher guide explains how the plugin works.

Where home recordings go wrong

Cutting the lows until nothing is left

Afraid of mud, a lot of people strip everything out down low. The vocal gets clean, but also thin and small. The weight that makes this sound raw and full is gone.

Crowding the mic for extra body

Getting closer does give you more low end, but also more rumble and popping p's and b's. You end up with a voice that sounds thick in your headphones and muddy in the mix. Stay at a fixed distance and let the body come from the mix.

Confusing volume with punch

A loud vocal doesn't automatically hit hard. Punch is about how fast each attack reaches you. If you only push the fader up, your voice yells over the beat instead of sitting in it.

Not sure this sound fits your voice? Check which vocal preset fits your voice. First time loading a preset? Here's how to load a vocal preset in FL Studio.

More sounds in the same lane

• JoeyAK-style vocals in Logic Pro: dark and hard
• 3Robi-style vocals in Logic Pro: full and direct
• Boef-style vocals in FL Studio: melodic and bright

Want to hear them side by side? All Type vocal presets with before and after videos are on one page.

Mula B Type presets are inspired by the vocal mixing style of Mula B. This is not an official product and Mula B is not involved. Results depend on your voice, mic and recording.