A challenge!

[oz_fenda]

-ing situation is what I think i've got myself here.......
I'm recording my solo EP and in one of the songs I'd like to have a big kind of 'na na' part and was thinking of inviting a bunch of mates around to get the nana kind of chant melody and record them......

The 'challenging' part is how I would do this?
I'm assuming I'd invite them round when the tune is basically finished, then get them to overdub the nana part..... But the sticking point is monitoring......I'd have a room full of 10+ people, I wouldnt have enough headphones to go round nor the amp to split the signal, and I'm thinking that having a speaker that they can use for reference would have to be damn loud to be heard above their noise, therefor could get in the way of having a descent quality recording :S

Any ideas?
Cheers,
Matt

How many pairs of headphones do you have? You could have like, 2 or 3 people at a time, and then mix the tracks afterwards. If you only have 1 pair of headphones then that might take awhile but it would work.

[MessianicDreams]

try a stereo speaker set-up with one channel phase reversed. aim'em so that the sound waves should "clash" right about where the mic is.



It won't be perfect, but i don't think the bleed will be that important anyways. you'd be surprised with what you can get away with!

[hairylarry]

Hi,

It's easy to build a headphones splitter. I built one that goes from one input to six outputs.

Mount your seven (or so) stereo jacks on a panel. I used a wood box. A metal project box would work too. Mount the input separate from the outputs.

Connect all the outputs together in parallel. All right channels connected. All left channels connected. All grounds connected. I used red for right, green for left, bare wire for ground. This makes it easy to check your wiring.

Wire the ground to the input jack.

Connect the input jacks right and left channels into the output array with big honking non inductive resistors. Mine look like square white boxes and say "20W 8 Ohms J NON-IND" except it has the upside down U ohms abbreviation.

Build or buy a stereo to stereo cable with 1/4 inch stereo plugs on each end. Plug that out of your headphone output and into the input on the splitter. Then you can plug up to six headphones into the outputs.

This is enough for 12 people to sing if they each listen to one side of the headphones standing next to each other with the headphone cups reversed. (pointing out)

Buy cheap headphones from Harvey Gerst or have everyone who has a pair bring theirs.

Ok, no separate mixes, no volume or tone controls, believe me the vocalists will deal with this. I don't feed the vocals back into the headphone mix so they hear the song in one ear and the voices in the other. Or you could have six vocalists wearing the headphones normally and throw the vocals into the headphone mix too.

My guess is the whole splitter can be built for 10 or 20 bucks.

Once you have it it will be easy to add background vocals in the future. And no 10 separate takes is not the same as 10 vocalists singing in unison.

Thanks,

Hairy Larry

[ecktronic]

If you dont have the monitorins capabilites then just do a seperate take for each person. Or get as many folk as you can (depending on how mnay headphones) at a time for each take.

Eck

[andyhix]

If you have headphones with reversible (swing open) cans (like moreme's), you'd only need half as many, as two people could share a pair. If you don't have a headphone amp, you could get servicable results with a crazy assed tree of splitters. you might want to put the "splitter tree" at the end of a headphone extension cable, though, so there's not a pound of crap yanking on your headphone output jack.

[Gonny]

Here's a trick that was mentioned in Tape Op some time back. I've never tried it, but in theory it seems like it would work.

Set up your monitors or some speakers in the recording space such that everybody could hear the tune and sing along without headphones. Set up your mic, set the levels, etc. Have everybody leave the room and record just the music the way the vocal mic would hear it blasting from the speaker - what would be the monitor "bleed" into the vocal mic. Now, have everybody come in and do the vocal part on a different track without changing a thing.

At this point you should have two tracks - one with vocals and the music bleeding into the mic, and another with just the music bleeding into the mic. In theory, if you mix these two together to another track while reversing the phase of one of them, the music bleed should cancel, leaving you with just the backing vocals.

Obviously, if you move the mic between the time you record the "bleed" alone and the time you record the vocals, this wouldn't work, so be careful nobody bumps the mic or changes anything else.

Like I said, I've never tried this, but have always been curious. If anybody is inclined to give it a shot, I'd be curious to hear how it goes.

[up-fiddler]

Originally Posted by oz_fenda

I'd like to have a big kind of 'na na' part and was thinking of inviting a bunch of mates around to get the nana kind of chant melody and record them......

Is no bleed all that important for a BIG 'na na' part? Before I started trying anything else I would probably record it with monitors set so they wouldn't feed back and have everybody sing. Then listen to the finished product and see how it sits in the mix. My two percent of a buck....

[Cult_Status02]

Just turn up the monitors in the control room if you can hear them in the tracking area, and sing away, a little bleed won't matter. Or, what I do is when I did a 7 person gang vocal for a punk band is just have a couple of them hold a pair of headphones in their hands and everyone could hear just enough to sing the part. Bleed shouldn't be too big of an idea.

[oz_fenda]

cheers everyone, definately some great ideas all round i'll take a little while to digest all the replies and get back to ya's when i've got the finished product

thanks so much!
cheers,
matt