Old 07-25-2011, 08:41 PM   #1
flmason
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Default Your Favorite Fake Vocal Doubling Methods?

Was reading over on The Modern Vocalist forum and tripped over the comment quoted below.

Reminded me that I was curious what you folks find effective for "fake" doubling.

For example, I've found that cloning a track and pitching it up and down a few cents can sound fat (sometimes).


Here's the quote:

Quote:
In another discussion, someone said they saw Robert Plant using a guitar stomp box for his mic. And there you go. Even if you had the same structure as Robert Plant, heck, if you were Robert Plant, you won't get "that" sound without that mic effect. And end up trying to re-create it with your own voice.

The same effect could be seen with the difference between early recordings of Ronnie James Dio from his days with Elfen to the drastic change of eq and mixing with Black Sabbath, to another change with Dio. On the early recordings, someone went hog-wild with the eq and made him sound like he was singing through a pillow in a fishbowl. And if you assumed that is how his voice actually sounded, you would wear yourself out trying to figure out that "mode," which I will now name as "singing through a pillow in a fish bowl" mode. Granted, Dio modified his singing technique through the years but a huge difference was also the equipment and recording and mixing strategy.
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Old 07-26-2011, 02:44 PM   #2
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Pretty much that.
Although, I'll usually do two duplicates and pitch one up and the other down, and also delay them each slightly, somewhere less than 30ms depending on the material.

I also occassionally like to do a severly band-passed duplicate vocal (telephone voice trick) and process that to be dirty or spacey or both and mix it in just under the main vocal. I'll usually drastically compress this copy and go easy on the original's compression, so every once in a while the original will drop below the processed version - neat effect for the right type of song.
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Old 07-26-2011, 04:08 PM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by flmason View Post
Was reading over on The Modern Vocalist forum and tripped over the comment quoted below.

Reminded me that I was curious what you folks find effective for "fake" doubling.

For example, I've found that cloning a track and pitching it up and down a few cents can sound fat (sometimes).
I evaluated this
http://www.stillwellaudio.com/?page_id=267
, but passed on it only because I seemed to get crashes when I used it (but I thought the effect was pretty useful.)
I also use this: http://www.vacuumsound.de/plugins.html (the ADT plugin). The effect of the ADT plugin is not nearly so dramatic as any of the other doubling methods mentioned so far, but it does add a nice fullness to vocals sometimes.
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Old 07-26-2011, 04:25 PM   #4
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http://www.kvraudio.com/get/3549.html

Make a few presets at 15ms, 20ms, 25ms and compare. I love this plug.
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Old 07-26-2011, 04:27 PM   #5
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I'm one of the boring guys who prefers multiple takes
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Old 07-26-2011, 04:29 PM   #6
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heh, one time I put a sideways glass cup facing my studio monitor and put the mic kinda on the side of the cup and recorded the output, then added a bit of delay and the compression that Ken was talking about, heavy on lead, not so heavy on the cup vox.....they punch through just at the right time..

heh..

~Rob.
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Old 07-26-2011, 05:00 PM   #7
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Yes, actual double tracking is usually prefered, but the subject line did specify "fake vocal doubling".
Sometimes you want the more "effecty" vibe of fake doubling/parallel processing, though.
For best results use real double tracking, however not all singers are very good at singing the same way every time, so you may be in for a whole lot of extra editing work that way
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Old 07-26-2011, 05:02 PM   #8
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And sometimes the musicians have left and all you have is one take
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Old 07-26-2011, 06:35 PM   #9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by timlloyd View Post
I'm one of the boring guys who prefers multiple takes
Yea, me too... when I'm not the singer! LOL!

I believe ADT was conjured up at John Lennin's request, no?
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Old 07-26-2011, 06:36 PM   #10
flmason
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Kenny View Post
Yes, actual double tracking is usually prefered, but the subject line did specify "fake vocal doubling".
Sometimes you want the more "effecty" vibe of fake doubling/parallel processing, though.
For best results use real double tracking, however not all singers are very good at singing the same way every time, so you may be in for a whole lot of extra editing work that way
Yeah, I'm looking for turd polishing here, as I'm new to vocals and patently terrible at it.
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Old 07-26-2011, 08:00 PM   #11
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Quote:
Originally Posted by flmason View Post
Yeah, I'm looking for turd polishing here, as I'm new to vocals and patently terrible at it.
I've been "polishing turds" for almost 20 years.... WHY, O
Great God, did you not give me the voice of Chris Cornell???



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Old 07-31-2011, 07:15 PM   #12
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Some songs I'm not so good at doubling, but another option is to get a couple of doubling tracks and chop up the individual phrases and line them up with the main track...you get most of the voc doubled with some subtle variations. I've also tried MANY variations of copying the main voc track and applying fx to it, including drop .3 tone, delay, compression, saturation, tape fx, modulation, room fx, comp, eq... if it's out there, I prob tried it... I gen use a standard fx chain for the main voc, then depending on the song, experiment with fx on the douubled one.
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Old 08-16-2011, 09:50 PM   #13
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I use Waves Doubler and I'm happy with the result
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Old 10-11-2011, 10:29 PM   #14
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Only artificial doubling I do is to borrow from another take or even from a repetition of the same line in another spot in the song. A little fudging around and it's as if it's been doubled properly. Generally I don't try to make it seem like the same person is singing two or more parts simultaneously though, something Einstein taught me
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