Doing Gang vocals with only one person?

professorlamp

I are Joe
Nov 2, 2009
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0
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Wales, United Kingdom
Im planning on doing some gang vocals soon and my nearest friends are 20 miles away so in the weekdays of working/university that just wont happen so what's the best way of recreating it all by myself?
 
Lots of tracks, don't edit them tightly after, try to at least use a different tone in your voice each time, even if just slightly different and afterwards bus them all to a stereo track with a good verb on it and maybe just slightly pan out some of the vox, no more than 5-10 L & R

That should at least give the illusion of gang vox with no gang
 
Dude, just post a sample here and the lyrics and ask people to make some recordings. It's done before and I believe the results were great.
I would record some stuff, no problemo!
 
Excellent...
Would ou apply a slightly different EQ or just leave that out of the question?

I should have mentioned some EQ and then some compression to make it all gel a little bit together and THEN put it through some verb

as for the EQing itself, do what sounds right to you. Personally I would just EQ it as a whole 1st and then maybe a little extra eq after the verb in case its a little too washy sounding

or you can try doing what Forceps suggested and see if anyone will track some extra vox for you
 
i have done this before, results werent to bad. like skinny viking said, dont make it too tight. pitch shift each voice a few cents, and dont be afraid to make some weird voices lol, its about having a bunch of different voices. Im gonna make a breakdown with gang vocals tonight by myself just for shits and giggles. I will post samples =P
 
Yeah ask others to just record a shout for you and you can download the little wav files.

I did it, it sounded great. Me doing it on my own had an "inbred" sound to it. haha.
 
Here's what I do:

2x gnarly takes with a good distance from the mic
2x gnarlier takes abnormally close

2x "clayman"-style whispers of the same phrase real close and personal with the mic. These will be layered gently and hard-panned L-R

Ahh and this time I lifted a movie clip of tribal shouts from crocodile dundee to help make me sound like an army ;)) The important thing is to be creative and you will come up with something.

Here's what I'm talking about: My mighty gang shouts EXAMPLE

Bob, don't kill me mang ;)
 
I think gang vocals with anything less than about 5 people just aren't as good. Not only are they too defined, not white-noisy enough, but the sheer mass of people spurs everyone else on and no-one feels embarrassed. But if you are all you've got.. dunno. Experiment with changing your voice.