"Pseudo Choir" test results

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chamelious

www.thesunexplodes.com
My band are getting ready to self record an album and we've been doing some tests. For one of our songs we want a choir/gang vocal effect at the end, but we cant afford/don't have the skill or equipment to record a choir. We figured we could record a bunch of people singing different parts and get a cool effect.

So this is the end of "DeadAlive", think around 40 seconds in, its just me and my singer Dave singing 13 different takes with both of us singing the same thing on each "take". And its just a 3 way harmony in 3 octaves. Then i just bussed them together and put a tiny bit of compression and reverb on to gel them together, i think the end result is quite promising for 20 minutes work.

Thought i'd share as the results are interesting and to see if anyone has any suggestions for when we record the actual track. Bare in mind we will as i said be using as many different people as possible, and making sure everythings 100% in tune (for this test everything was 1 quick take)



Please excuse the overall quality, we record everything like this before we play it live just to finalise detail, i just wanted to share the choir test :)
 
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Secret treaties.....

The choir won't let me in to hear them.
I'm going instrumental !
 
I'm confused...is the link not working for you?
 
Now is the time to recognize.......different speeds !

Having lots of different people singing for that choir effect will make it sound more choir like than your clip, although I like the clip. If there is just two of you, try recording each take at a different speed. If you did 13 takes of two of you at a different speed each time, you'd sound awesomely choiristic when all crunched together. If all the people singing were varispeeded each time, well ! Especially if there are lots of vocal exaggerations like falsettos, Pavorotti type deepness, American twang and drawls, English theatrical preciseness, black girl stylings, cockney music hall 'shaaaatings'......
It seems very few people use varispeed anymore. I wouldn't buy or download a multitracker without it.
 
How'd you mean record each take at a different speed grim?
 
chamelious said:
How'd you mean record each take at a different speed grim?
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When I was a kid, record players had four speeds, 16, 33and a third, 45 and 78 RPM. We used to have great fun playing albums at 78 or 16.
I don't know if computer DAWs have varispeed or the capability to speed up or slow down a recording. When I was looking into which standalone DAW to get, I was surprized to discover that few of them had varispeed. On the cassette based portastudios, it was practically a standard feature. Whatever you'd have recorded, you could speed up or slow down, usually by 3 semitones either way. So for example, if you recorded a song in C, as you slowed it down the key/pitch would change, you'd go to B, then B flat then at it's slowest point the song would be playing in A. And, starting back at C, if you sped it up, you'd go to C#, then D and at the fastest point it the key/pitch would be in E flat. Alot of the more recent DAWs would have a feature that allowed you to slow down the song without changing the pitch, kind of a timestrech thing. But that was no good to me. I sold a virtually brand new ZOOM MRS1266 because it had no varispeed. It was perfect in every other way, you could even do backwards recording on it. But that absence of varispeeding rendered it useless to me.
The benefit of speeding up and slowing down a take was that you could get all kinds of wonderful and different textures in both instruments and vocals. If a song was in a key that you had difficulty in singing, you just need to slow the recording down a semitone and hey presto, suddenly you can hit the notes effortlessly and when you'd go back to the correct speed on playback, your voice would be subtly altered, slightly higher or lower depending on whether or not the take was recorded sped up or slowed down.
It had the advantage on instruments too, of enabling you to actually record certain notes that were off the scale as well as changing texture. And of course home recorders like me that had no intention of ever playing these songs live could slow down the recording and execute tricky passages, especially on instruments that weren't ones we generally played. My cello parts are pretty ropey ~ but they'd be unlistenable if I didn't record them slowed down. I couldn't play the keyboards if you held a gun to my kneecaps but I've recorded piano, electric piano, organ, clavinet, synthesizer and various other keyboards and by slowing down the recording, put together parts that even I, knowing I 'cheated' :eek: have marvelled at and besides, I learned alot about transposing and different keys because of course, when varispeeding, one is recording in a different key than the one the song is in.
Because I like to include backing vocals alot, varispeeding is non negotiable. Speeding up also is great on vocals, especially in parts where long sustained notes are needed {gets them over quickly !} and on percussion, gongs, tambourines, toms and things of that nature.
I don't know if I've explained that well, but whatever you track to, check and see if you can change the pitch. If you slow down the pitch and record, when back to normal speed, you'll sound like a chipmunk. When you speed up and record then playback at normal speed, you'll sound like Barry White on Mars !
 
What you're doing on this track is the same thing Mutt Lange did to get those thick vocals on Def Leppard albums, only one a smaller scale. (They recorded the same vocal parts hundreds of times and layered them.)

You could try using a vocoder to record different voices. However, the voices would be those of whatever instrument you played into the source input, not human voices. So, for example, you might end up with a singing guitar or synth. You might try running one singer's mic into the formant input and another singer's voice into the source input and see what happens.
 
Every time a Mormon knocks on your door... invite them in and then stuff them in the cellar / dungeon I know you have

When they don't return, others will come looking for them, thinking that they've strayed from the path... soon you will have enough for a whole choir....

But seriously, if your vocalists are good enough and you use as many different people you'll get a choir "effect"... good luck... :drunk:
 
Armistice said:
Every time a Mormon knocks on your door... invite them in and then stuff them in the cellar / dungeon I know you have

When they don't return, others will come looking for them, thinking that they've strayed from the path... soon you will have enough for a whole choir....
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Good idea! Those guys are good at singing too!

Don't forget to keep them hydrated though.

:D
 
Greg_L said:
Does your brother know you replaced him with a drum machine? :laughings:
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I write a lot of his drums this way :) He ends up playing a mixture of what i write as i write the song and what he adds.
 
i feel like vary speed has been replaced my autotune and melodyne. you can sing 100 takes and move them where ever you want.

It sounds pretty cool, but you have to get other melodies in there. don't just make every word match up and down, vary up the lower octaves and a few highs. maybe time a set differently as well.
 
Theres 3 different melodys in there, but they're pretty simple ones, we just wanted to test the effect.
 
Illogical_Mind said:
i feel like vary speed has been replaced by autotune and melodyne. you can sing 100 takes and move them where ever you want.
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Sacrilege ! Wash your mouth out with soap !
Well, maybe Melodyne !! It sounds like bleedin' soap. For infants. :laughings:
 
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