True Chorusing

[mark4man]

To my ear, the highest quality rock / pop vocal recordings have always been chorused. George Martin used the technique quite a bit with The Beatles. Other good examples would be "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" by Elton John, "Synchronicity" by the Police, "Sentimental Lady" by Fleetwood Mac, etc.

You know the sound when you hear it, always characterized by dual vocal lines slightly offset; & the quality key is that there's no flattening of the EQ; & no loss of the bottom end. The very best chorused tracks sound almost as if the tape was rewound after a perfect take, for the singer to sing along (with that take) while laying down a live duplicate.

My question is: Since Chorus as an effect seems to flatten the EQ (& kill the bottom end altogether), what's a good technique to use to accomplish that really professional timbre? Can it be done with a high-end effects processor? I've noticed that duplicating & then offsetting a master vocal track (with PC Mutitracking) tends to have the same fidelity loss as the effect (I believe this is because the two waveforms are identical, & thereby marginally out of phase?) Can that sound only be acheived by recording two live vocals side by side, whereby each vocal line has it's own varying characreistics & full EQ, resulting in a true "double" sound? Thanks.

mark4man

 

[chessrock]

You can clone the vocal track and pitch-shift each one just a hair off of one another - taking one down and the other up just slightly, then pan them 11 o'clock and 1 o'clock (or 2 and 10).

Most pitch-shifters will give you the option of "preserving duration" or something to that effect. This way, you won't be getting any of the cancellation or comb-filtering you'd get by off-setting them time-wise.

 

[TexRoadkill]

Vocal doubling is pretty common. It's just 2 takes with one burried a little in the mix. You can also compress the hell out of the backing track and keep it low so it is more subtle.

The new Cheryl Crow single uses it pretty heavily. So did that annoying "I'm falling even more in love with you" song.

 

[chessrock]

So did that annoying "I'm falling even more in love with you" song.

That was annoying. I still think it's just one voice, though, with too much of the chorus applied.

 

[Chris Shaeffer]

I'm pretty sure the chorus effect you are talking about comes from actually tracking the vocals more than once. Backing vox in particular, sometimes get lots of tracks. That's why the effect is called chorusing: it's designed to make one source sound like it is coming from many sources.

The best way to do it is actually have may sources.

Its worth singing the vocals twice and redoing it until the doubled track is almost identical to the main one. The electronic tricks just don't sound nearly as good to my ear.

Take care,
Chris

 

[Seanmorse79]

...unless the singer has trouble staying on key ...then one is PLENTY

 

[mark4man]

Thanks all

I'm going to try singing a duplicate track; & also: Cloning the master track, offsetting; & adding bottom back into the EQ.

mark4man