Triple or QUAD tracking vocals in extreme metal

[MaellaJohn]

I'm on that trek in which an aspiring general producer soaks in all the information he or she can.
I've heard about double tracking vocals to get a pretty big sound.

And now, I'm postulating the benefits of triple tracking vocals. Screamed vocals, predominantly.
I'm just wondering.. is this unheard of, or a waste of time? To be honest, I doubt I would ever willfully record three tracks of vocals for a band in my producing lifetime, because it seems like it could be a waste of time.

However, for recording my own band, I was thinking about doing that and panning the tracks 50 L, center, and 50 R. Then automating like hell and all that.
Thoughts?

I also thought of quad tracking them too, but it seems like after a certain point, they'd start to mush together unless I devote like 50 hours to tracking vocals per album to get each syllable right on time.

 

[Derpsicle]

As long as it's tight I guess... If you have too many tracks then it might be hard to hear the lyrics, but yeah, might be suitable on some parts I guess.

 

[Aaron Smith]

I'm a huge fan of big vocal layering (a la Strapping Young Lad), but it's all about context...meaning, don't overdo it. I generally like to have the vocalist first do one pass of the song, start to finish (especially when I'm not already familiar with the vocals of the song, which is almost always), without really worrying about whether or not the entire performance is strong enough to be a final take. Then go back to the top, and start over again, focusing on just a few bars at a time- one sentence at a time, whatever makes sense for the singer to perform without breaking up the vibe too much. As we go, I decide what parts might sound cool to be accented based on the instrumental context, sonic space available, dynamics, and lyrical content to decide what parts might sound cool to be accented...which phrases are lyrically more profound, even. Sometimes it can be cool to layer different types of screams and growls, but I'm more often a huge fan of having the vocalist perform the exact same line repeatedly, in the same manor, in order to stack them all up and pan them out to make it sound like one big voice, rather than multiple voices. At the most, I'll normally have seven tracks- one in the center, and then six repeated the exact same way (three hard left/three hard right), but some parts might sound cool with just one left/one right/no center, or whatever combination you can think of that just works for the part. VocAlign helps a ton with the extreme layering, since I see no reason to prematurely wear out a vocalist's voice, having him repeat the same growl many more times than necessary, just because of minor timing discrepancies. If the quality of the tone is the same but the ending is not too far off, for example, just VocAlign it, or even just slip edit it- you can get away with a lot of really blatant chopping and editing with metal vocals that would be impossible to hide if it were singing.

I work through the whole song in this way, several times listening to what we've done so far, making sure it all flows, and eventually the song is done. Then of course during mixing, it's a matter of automating down the super layered parts so that they sit at a similar RMS level that the single tracked mono parts do. In my opinion, the layered parts aren't supposed to necessarily sound louder, they're just supposed to impact the listener in a different way.

Voila, killer metal vocals that don't get boring after 30 seconds. Just be creative with it and don't be overly concerned about making sure there's some kind of pattern to when the layering happens; sometimes patterns can be good, but it's totally not a necessity.

Here's one of my band's tracks where we approached the vocals exactly as I've just described. There's a good amount of single tracked mono parts in there, but it's peppered with layering...although I don't think there were any seven-layer parts, as far as I can remember:

 

[MaellaJohn]

Aaron, the vocals sound awesome in the song.
And your post is epic. Thank you so much for the advice.

 

[Charles J]

double-track and as Aaron said, just get creative with the L/R WIDE vocals and experiment with different textures for those L/R as well as even the double, sometimes!

The vocalist is the key ingredient in this... most guys sound MUCH better when layered though. I love crazy vocal productions and layering but I just go by what I hear in my head...!