tips on multiple vocal layers

[bryced87]

Hello

Some of my friends songs they record have multiple vocal layers or harmonies. Some sessions they work with have a lead vocal then a second take under that lead vocal as a layer and then they have 6 additional vocal tracks which are either harmonies or layered harmonies etc. He will sometimes compress each vocal track till they are about the same level etc and then he will bounce all the harmony tracks into one track and use that for mixing rather than mix 6 tracks.

Do you all do this to or do you do it differently? I am curious.

[dr_daw]

Personally, I don't do this as there is really no need unless you're running out of track count on a 24 track 2" machine :P It's an old technique used in tape based recording to free up tracks. In a DAW you don't really need to do this, you'd be committing a sound to tape, and there is no need. Leave it all separate for the mix in case you need to do fine adjustments.

[bryced87]

what about processing power? Should you normally have to bounce/export a bunch of layers to one track if you were running low on processing power?

[Southsidemusic]

We usually record the lead vocals on 2 mono tracks (one take each) for a cool "doubler effect done right. Takes a lot of knowledge from the vocalist as some songs are quite intricate and after that we do the same again (dub that) on one stereo track and compress and EQ then differently, although we don't bouce them down to one as we might wanna tweak any one of the takes and tracks later on. We do however send them ti individual busses to make eq and copm and other sweet plugin effects easier than say put the same plugins on every channel. With this doubler effect you get from doing multiple takes of the same vocals you get a "Fat" chorous sounding vocal lead and it really makes the vocals fuller and phatter but it is a matter of taste. We don't do this on a "Lana Del Rey" or Agnes Oble track but more for the Pop/Dance vocals where a bit of vocal doubling is quite cool :-)

Try out different ideas and see what your songs needs and wants for the type of music style you make. That is the fun part. Trying out all the different methods and hear what fits :-)

Best Of Luck
Christopher

[dr_daw]

what about processing power? Should you normally have to bounce/export a bunch of layers to one track if you were running low on processing power?

Yah, I would bounce tracks if I'm running into processing power issues, but I would only to do it to free up my inserts being run. I would bounce the one track, I would rarely bounce the group of tracks. I haven't had to do this in over a decade.