Just putting up a new song that I have been working on -its actually quite short (only 2 minutes)song that I did 100% on pro tools.
I was hoping to perform this live for a college assessment -which I would love have with an ethnic sounding choir of about 10 fellow students singing the chorus melody 'Hallelujah Hallelujah once all Hallelujah " " now we are free...
I don't have much else to say to this--other than to ask if anyone knows some good tricks for recording vocals of say 3 individuals and making them sounds like a choir - but not a classical one-- a more ethnic earthy choir (if you catch my drift?)
Please listen -and honest
Raina
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then make 2 new tracks with the same vocal audio recordings. pan one hard right, one hard left. put those same effects on those tracks, but add reverb to both. the trick is, apparently, modifying the settings on both of these tracks to be slightly different - it doesn't matter. usually i just throw the eq a bit on each and turn the mix of the reverb down on one and up on the other, intensity of the chorus, etc.
honestly i don't hear any difference and it might not apply, but it should provide
Doug mentioned exactly what I usually do and that is to record the group multiple times. The more the better. In fact, if time allows have them do some other stuff too, like singing/yelling the parts in an over the top kind of way that might sound cool in the background, or anything else you can think of.
If you can only get one performance recorded, all is not lost. Once you start editing you can easily create a bigger ensemble sound for longer passages assuming that the performers are repeating their vocal parts throughout the song. For instance, if you look at your one take (or even multiple takes or a group mix down... which I won't address here lol) and copy and push only the copy back a repeated section or two (feel free to use the extra at the end to cover the beginning), then when added to the original it gives our ears the illusion that there were multiple takes from just one. When doing so though it helps to lock your cursor to a grid that is displayed in bars/measures especially since your project was tracked to a click (which makes this all so much easier).
However, if you want to keep it simple then just avoid that last paragraph and record multiple tacks.
:P
Regarding creating a choir with 3 voices, - I'd go with what has already been said, with the addition of one extra trick, pitchshifting. I'm not a PT user but there are plugins available that let you shift the pitch of vocals without changing the timing or speed, (eg Melodyne, but PT may have it's own native plug). In it's simplest form for your application this can give you an octave variation up or down. If you want to get more involved you could try pitch-shifting to give you new harmonies. When layered in a choir any digital artifacts just might go unnoticed.
IE, the center is the "base time", shift the Right track LEADS teh time base of the center by "X" miliseconds... the Left track LAGS the time base of the center by "Y" milliseconds...
adjust the R and L lead/lag time might separate the voice sections further?
I'm not a pro mixer... just an IDEA. i would just guess the lead/lag times should be different... EG, if one leads by 20 ms, the other should lag by an amount different from that.
I know in CEP/AdobeAudition this would have been easy what i suggest to try... I dont know about in other mixing software.
If you do, I recommend zooming in on the waveforms of the tracks in question, to see where the peak transients align. If a track is shifted so that the peaks are going in the opposite direction, they will cancel-out -out of 'phase' cancellation. Can be corrected easily by 'nudging' the clip just a little bit. You'll see it how the waveform aligns.
SEDstar said: