How to record a gang vocal in this situation?

  • Thread starter Thread starter JayX
  • Start date Start date
J

JayX

New member
Ok, for those who don't listen to this kinda music.. a gang vocal is basically a group of guys "singing along" at a set point, very shouty. A good example is at http://www.myspace.com/champion (click the song Promises Kept) and there's a gang vocal just after the normal vocals start.

So we have a lot of gang vocal in our stuff, and we've recorded our normal parts, and we're taking the multitrack to a house on the weekend with about 15 of our friends.. how do we get the timings etc correct? we can't give everyone headphones and most people will be learning the tracks there and then really.. can we monitor with speakers without spill somehow?
 
XXX

champion rules.

ok, here's what I do.
you need at least 4 good takes of each word or phrase.
an open aux send channel in stereo, with a decent reverb on it. not too saturated.

pan 2 all the way, left and right, keep your reverb on these flipped, so if you have one sent all the way left, reverb it all the way right.

take the other 2 tracks, and pan them between 45 and 65 left and right.
there's a sweet spot in there somewhere.
run your reverb right in line with these

and if you have the ability, do a fifth take and line that up right in the middle for panning and reverb.. go lighter on the verb for the center. as it will muddy up the others...

for an example,
www.myspace.com/swashbuckle listen to the song Walk the Plank. towards the end, there is about a min worth of sing-a-long action.
 
ohh, and i always track the gangs w/ a speaker in the room, turned up just loud enough to hear it, but not overtake any actual recording. adds a little flavor to the gangs.
 
i would definately agree and say that spill in this case isn't a bad thing, esp. if you're going for the raw sound of "gang vocals"

use a speaker, and good luck ;)
 
lenMCHC said:
ohh, and i always track the gangs w/ a speaker in the room, turned up just loud enough to hear it, but not overtake any actual recording. adds a little flavor to the gangs.
Click to expand...
You can track with speakers in the room but wire them out of phase to get cancelation.
 
its a lot easier than it sounds to pull this off
 
lenMCHC was headed in the right direction...use a variety of chorus and reverb widths/depths to make it sound like there's a lot more people screaming than there really is - if done right, you can do a proper "gang vocal" with only a single vocal take...just copy the parts you want to gang up to another track(or 2 or 3 or whatever), offset 1-2 ms., then slap the verb/chorus on there and play around with it
 
For whatever gang vocals ive done , I just used 2 or 3 people and did more than one take. We used the speakers so we could all hear it. I didnt think it sounded bad. The hardest part youll have will be getting 15 people organized haha. But if you want the 15 people thing going on as like a community thing , go for it. I'm sure your takes will come out good.
 
aw cheers guys, what a great response. i'll pass the thread link over to our singer whose been doing the recording on his fostex 8tracker and i'll make sure he gets it all clear in his head before we start :D

i'll make sure i post a link of how it all comes out hehe thanks again.
 
$.02

in cheap sound track dates it's not unusuall to give the phones to section leaders and expect everyone to play with after a few practice runs...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top