All the lads together

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bradsucks

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Anybody have any tips for creating a decent effect of "a crowd of many voices singing together" with only one voice?

I'd kind of like to get that going in one of my songs but it's just little ol' me here.

Also desirable is the group shouting effect, such as in a lot of Cake stuff. "HEY!" and so on. Whenever I do it, it just sounds like one voice layered a whole bunch of times rather than a crowd.
 
I've tried it, and I couldn't get it to sound right with just one voice. I tried taking a number of different takes, randomly altering pitches, playing with reverbs and all kinds of stuff.

I think your best bet would be to do a number of takes with 3 or 4 people, then layer them together.
 
There are a couple of tricks you can try--

the most common one is to simply overdub yourself multiple times. It's nearly impossible to get a perfect match of the original vocal, so the slight delay will make it so each has a unique time sequence. Then try EQ-ing each part slightly differenly.

Once you have several tracks, bounce down to 2 stereo and adjust the pans slightly on each.
 
Also, when you're over dubbing, mute all the previous dubs of your "Heh"s. Without them to que off of you'll invariably do the dubs a little differently each pass. Do as many passes as you can stand (10+ dubs at a minimum) and pan them across the field and bounce them to a stereo pair. Works for me. YMMV.
 
Take the ole DAT out in traffic and then start cutting off everyone, and record them saying Hey you idiot. once you feel you have enough. Import them to your program and edit.
 
Back off the mic a little more than usual so you get a little more room sound. If you were micing a real crowd they wouldnt all be close miced. Giving them some space will help make it sound a little more realistic.

Dont you have some friends who can help out? loser ;)
 
i was just about to say that.

coming away from the mic is a big step to geting that effect. it's a lot easier to get a load of people in the booth and do it that way. then if you do aobut 4 or 5 takes of that, you'll have more than enough.
 
Woo, thanks for the tips. Backing up from the mic seems to do the trick nicely -- I can't believe I didn't think of that. No wonder I have no friends.
 
well it makes sense. obviously going closer to the mic is going to make things sound more upfront. so backing off will give you a more room sound thign which tends to be how those group tracks are made.
 
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