overdubbing vocals

  • Thread starter Thread starter dobro
  • Start date Start date
dobro

dobro

Well-known member
Virtual newbie question. I'm getting into layering vocal bits. When I do it, I get an interesting effect that is more than and different from the sound of two people singing. I like the sound, but I want to be able to overdub vocals and have it sound like just two voices. Am I making sense? What's the effect I'm getting? Is it some kind of full duplex lag between the playback track and the record track?

Oh yeah - it only happens with voices singing the same notes. It doesn't happen with harmonies.
 
I know exactly what you are talking about and also wanted to do something like this too. I posted something about this a long time ago but no one replied.

Sometimes what I'd do is put the first voice on the left speaker and put the other voice on the right and have one of them off a couple milliseconds and that worked out OK but it wasn't exactly what I was looking for.
 
I think that you are getting a slight flange because the overdub has a slight delay from the original.

Try to pull the overdub back a few ms till they match.
 
virtual newbie answer here!


the effect you are experiencing is a natural chorus (which I love using on bgv!)

panning the two will help, but what you're kind of dealing with is a phase issue of 2 separate things that are competing...
you might try slight variences in eq or pulling one back a bit in the mix!

hope it helps!
 
Okay, I don't care if it's a flange or a chorus - I got some ideas for things to try out. Thanks, and I'll try them out, and report back.
 
On overdubbing vocals a couple of miliseconds delay or advance won't make a difference, as a vocalist cannot sing miliseconds "in-time". What you are hearing is just the natural play between tone and frequency, which creates its own effect, depending on how close the vocalist matches the part(s).
In other words, you cannot say its flanging, choral or whatever.
You can use it, pan it, or if you find the effect is to much but you still want a bigger vocal sound, just layer more tracks on top.

To me, nothing is more fun than to create sounds with voices, its "my trip" at the moment. I'm experimenting with complete repetiveness and minimalism in the instrumental parts, using munimum percussion, minumum and repeating bass lines - set "moods" with sounds rather than played parts and for the rest just use vocals. A lead vocal, backing voices, some single, some doubled, and groups of 2 and 3 part harmonies.
The trick is to treat each individual 2 or 3 part harmony as its own entity, with its own panning, EQ, effect and balance - and then play them off against other groups.
A good example of that is Uru's "Do you believe", in the MP3 clinic under Our Xmas song.

If anyone wants to have a go at that one - guess how many vocal tracks in total on that song.
 
I'll tell you what I've done. I've done each of my parts slightly panning each voice. Each one is slightly compressed to even out any peaks I may have hit. I send them to a stereo sub mix in my software, then I compress the freakin' hell out of it (stereo), add a little chorus and some verb and BINGO! This makes a real solid sound, but a little on the fake side too.

I love doing harmonies with myself. I like playing around with that crap. I feel that learning to sing to yourself is half of the problem.
 
If you use the same mic, in the same pattern, with the same pre amp, and pre amp settings. You most likely will sing a part pretty similar as well. Try changing the pattern, your distance fromt he mic, sing a little diagonal across the face of the mic. Things like this seem to change the "voice" that is singing.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top