Doubling vocals

J

jaybriggs84

New member
I'm about to begin recording a band and the singer I think may sound good doubled. I've never had much luck with doubling vocals before and have always strayed from it. Usually the singer was singing too off from his first take for it to sound good. Can anyone lend me some advice on how to make this sound better?
 
Put the best vocal take together and then the get singer to 'learn' that version, same phrasing, same inflections etc. If he gets close you won't need to do much editing on it
 
I've done several singers with doubling up on the vocals and it really thickens the mix, if it is done right. As suggested capture that one magic take and work with the vocalist, it is not an easy under taking and takes alot of patience on your part and the singers, but it has to be right on to really work.
 
If you are pretty handy with editting audio, you can do a lot of things to make a double match up better. The usual tricks for my are chopping up the words/phrases, scooting them to match the main track as best as possible, and then time stretching to match up releases or whatever. Sometimes I just fade out the end of a word that is held too long or something. And of course a bit of Autotune here and there.
It is a nice thought to think the singer will be able to hit that perfect take again after listening to it a couple times; but sometimes it just isn't happening, and rather than wasting everyone's time a few quick edits can work just about as well.
 
For a different sort of sound, I've had good luck with having a 2nd "doubled vocal" mixed much quieter in with a main vocal part. Almost works sort of like a reverb effect. And it's a little more forgiving if the parts don't line up perfectly. Just something to try, maybe.
 
You can also lose the plosives on the second take. That will let the two coexist much better.

Here's an example of quadroupled/sextupled vocals I did that probably don't sound it:

 
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