Duplicating vocal tracks??

[presto5]

Does anyone do this? Is it a dorky effect to use? I thought it sounded kinda cool to duplicate a vocal track and move one just a little over and panning somewhere in the stereo field to get a stereo sound.....newbie to vocal recording and my voice is kinda "honky" any tips? Thanks

 

[legionserial]

If it's exactly the same track, merely duplicating it and panning it will make little difference, because it's exactly the same track right down to minute detail. Assuming it's evenly panned, it's still going to sound mono. If it's not evenly panned, it'll just sound like a mono signal panned slightly to one side. If they aren't panned at all, it'll obviously just sound like 1 track but louder.

One thing you can do if you duplicate is to pitchshift one of them up by a few cents, and one of them down by a few cents. (You might want to read up on this as I can't remember how much you'd shift by). This may give you a stereo effect, but I think it's actually more effective as a method of layering.

In actuality, the simplest way to do it is to just record your vocals a second time, and then pan one left and one right. Much like you'd do with guitars etc.

 

[Steenamaroo]

if you duplicate the track and shift one out of time or out of pitch for effect,,,really all you're doing is manually setting up a chorus effect.

if you have a chorus plugin in your arsenal, use it, cos it'll do pretty much the same thing, but without the hassle.


the thing to be aware of though, is that chorus will sound like chorus,
whereas recording the track twice will sound like recording the track twice.

generally, my preference would be to do the latter, if the intention is to beef the vox up a bit.

 

[Washburn100]

It is the cheating way to double track a vocal. The best as mentioned is to just record it twice and pan to taste.

You can also do some interesting things such as quasi radical eq on one track or compression or distortion etc. By them mixing the dry track with the altered or effected track you can get some very cool vocals. In essence this is parallel compression or eq'ing etc.

 

[moresound]

if you duplicate the track and shift one out of time or out of pitch for effect,,,really all you're doing is manually setting up a chorus effect.

if you have a chorus plugin in your arsenal, use it, cos it'll do pretty much the same thing, but without the hassle.


the thing to be aware of though, is that chorus will sound like chorus,
whereas recording the track twice will sound like recording the track twice.

generally, my preference would be to do the latter, if the intention is to beef the vox up a bit.

^^^^^^ this is all good advice.........head it well ^^^^^^^

 

[friesenman]

Be very careful with this duplicating. If you're moving one over by a millisecond or so it'll sound cool in stereo... but try folding it to mono. It almost disappears. Need to take into consideration the fact that many people still are not lucky enough to have stereo in some places. That or trying to listen to it on an iPhone or any other cellphone speaker. Try all the above mentioned stuff. All of it is sound advice and will preserve the vocals even when folded to mono.

Another thing to try with your vocals is rerecording the vocals in different ways. Rerecording it with the same performance volume and pitch is a great way to fatten it up. Rerecording it and adding vocal harmonies (same delivery, different notes in the same scale) is a good way to also fatten it up AND add diversity. Experiment.

 

[dintymoore]

... my voice is kinda "honky" any tips? Thanks

Listen to James Brown records.

 

[r1chard]

I think this is a great effect. If one of the tracks is slightly delayed then panned hard left and right, it is a doubling effect. Chorus has an lfo that I hear and it sounds like an effect. The doubling sounds almost like two people and no processor type effect. I have done this before, slowed one track down just a hair as long as they are not too short. Kind of does some quasi psycho acoustic as they phase in and out with each other.

 

[RAMI]

It's the exact same thing as using a simple mono delay. But you're stuck with only one repeat. If that's what you want, fine. But it does nothing more than that.

 

[r1chard]

Well it depends on how you do it. If you take the mono delay and pan it hard right and the original hard left it gives you a stereo spreading effect depending on how much the delay time is on the delayed track.