Recording vocals like it's a small choir...

[Black neon bob]

Been wanting to do this for a long time now... but im more curious how the hell someone would get it to sound so damn impressive like some bands have it...

few examples:

- Queen: bohemian rhapsody.
- SYL: velvet kevorkian.
- Devin townsend: christeen, wild colonial boy, earth day, deep peace, etc.
- Opeth: a fair judgement (middle part).

I found a great singer (Scottcash on the forum) and we are going to do this spiritual beggars/down/deep purple kind of project, so that's in the bag allready..

Im just wondering if anyone here has done multiple voices like that before... 6 voices or so, how do you pan them?
i figure there is need for compression the entire pack of voices, some nice reverb...

any tips?

 

[fistula]

i was asking some similiar question - but it was about hardcore "gang" vocals

http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/andy-sneap/269433-recording-hardcore-choir.html

 

[Deus.exe]

The key is a lot of vocal tracks. Doubling or quadrupling meoldies.

I'm no Devin Townsend by any stretch of the imagination but here is my Attempt at a choir part. (no pitch correction was used at all on this)

What I did was I recorded two tracks of main melody, one 3rd harmony track, one 5th harmony (higher) track and one 5th Harmony (Lower) and threw on a cathedral type reverb.

By the way it's panned Mono because I did it is from from one of my bands backing tracks.

Hope this helps.

 

[smy1]

Hey Bob,

my favorite way to do it is this:

a) record with different distances and angles from the mic or different mics
b) use at least 15-20 different vocal tracks (30-40 might be better)
c) do not pitch correct
d) make sure the takes are not perfect (you need them to be a bit off-pitch every now and then to make them big)
e) pitch shift some tracks one octave down and up and mix them into the background

The less effort you take while doing choirs, the better/more realistic they get. It's weird, but the better you sing, the less they sound like a choir, because it is only one singer.

Hope this helps.

 

[Deus.exe]

I just fixed up a little snippet with both the choir and the original demo track (the choir part was recorded half a year later)

Choir with the rest of the instruments

 

[Black neon bob]

Hey that sounds cool Deus!

Cool Smy, will try that as well, thanks for the clear advices guys...

 

[du8]

I've had the most luck using multiple voices.

As in having two or three singers doing multiple passes with on mic. There is really no substitution for having the voices blend BEFORE they hit the microphone.I like to use an Omni pattern and have the singers change position for take to take.

another thing to think about is the arrangement of the part. it's important to cover a real wide range of notes. you want to get some harmonies up as high (in pitch) as they can. You might consider doing some tracks in their falsetto voices and just run them real quiet. it really opens things up.

 

[Ermz]

Opeth likely would've just done multiple vocal takes with the one vocalist. The higher harmonies likely would've been done by Steve Wilson and the lower doubles and such by Mike.

There's really tons of ways you can do it. You can get multiple vocalists doing it around the one Omni mic, or just the single vocalist multitracking many times with slight nuances and different harmonies.

Depends how 'clean' you want it to sound more than anything.

 

[ScottCash]

Well, time to get cracking! I think I will train my parrot to do the parts. That way my voice doesn't get to tired after 40 takes....hehehe

 

[SteelRat]

If you really want to hear them done well with only one person singing the parts...check out Blind Guardian...A Night at the Opera is wall-to-wall huge choirs, the first Demons and Wizards album has a lot of fantastic choirs from the same guy, Hansi Kursch...This guy really goes nuts building voices...

 

[Gnash]

Man, I just tracked a "gang" vocal session. I had every band member go in and throw a line in, then called whoever was around(girlfriends, neighbors, moms, kids) to put a take on it. I wound up with about 30 clips. THEN, I let the band hear it the next day. I swiveled around in the chair to see their faces. Their jaws dropped to the floor! Good times!

 

[du8]

If you really want to hear them done well with only one person singing the parts...check out Blind Guardian...A Night at the Opera is wall-to-wall huge choirs, the first Demons and Wizards album has a lot of fantastic choirs from the same guy, Hansi Kursch...This guy really goes nuts building voices...

Hansi is indeed the king of that techniqe....When I saw them Blind guardian live I was afraid that I would miss the huge vocals, but everyone in the crowd sang along...so it sounded huge anyway...

 

[slinky_]

Haha! I actually recorded the intro of Christeen today! My little brother who´s got a bad flue did the "Au, au" things in the beginning

http://www.dyessence.net/christeenmix1.mp3

 

[greyskull]

lots of tracks, lots of mics, bounce down to save cpu