A Simple But Advanced Way To Double Vocals

Today I’m gonna give you a very interesting tip I heard last summer at the Potluck Conference.

It has to do with a cool way to do a double.

Now, I haven’t tried this myself but I like wacky advice, especially when it’s coming from seasoned professionals.

So I leave it up to you to check it out if you want to.

Double the Vocals

The traditional way to do a double is to make the singer sing the same part as closely as possible to the original vocal take.

It gives you a thicker sound and adds a layer of depth to the vocal, especially when it’s really well done.

The normal way is just use the same microphone and same microphone placement for the double so it’ll sound as close to the original as possible.

Mix It Up

Here’s where it gets a little different.

Instead of using the exact same microphone placement, put up a second microphone as a room mic and use that mic as the double.

Keep the original microphone in place so you can get a good performance out of the singer, but by using the room mic you not only get a doubled vocal but also some ambience.

This might not sound awesome unless you have a good room to record in but it’s an interesting way of adding a different dimension to your doubled vocals.

Quadrupled Vocals?

You could even go so far as to have two microphones on at all times.

Close mic both the original and double as well as use a room mic for the ambience. That way you could have a really strong vocal double in the center of the stereo spectrum while panning the ambient vocals to the sides for a wide but tight sounding double.

This sort of trickery might result in some phase issues so be careful when you’re mixing all those vocal tracks together. Panning is a good short-term solution for moving dealing with phase by moving the tracks away from each other, but check your mix in mono just to make sure nothing sounds wacky.

Even though this particular trick isn’t included in Mixing Strategies I do spend a good amount of time explaining my 9-step method to a professional vocal sound.

If you’re looking for new ideas making for your vocal sound cool, whether it’s in the recording or the mixing stage, it’s all a part of the Strategies Bundle.

Click the link to check it out:

www.audio-issues.com/strategies

Image by: monomaticpics

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