Vocal Help

[RI Producer]

listening to some songs it sounds like the raps are recorded like 3 or 4 times mixed together to one final mix using the best lines from each performance. now my question is. Is that tha way that vocals are record'd or is it one take?

 

[MASSIVE Mastering]

Yes.


Seriously - Depends on who's behind the board, who's in front of the mic, and what best serves the mix.

If the vocalist is *very* tight with doubling, there you go - assuming it works well with the mix.

I always had vocalists double and triple tracks pretty much no matter what - Made comping easy, and if the performances were tight enough, gave many options on mixdown (a pre-fade chorus on a different track than the one being used as a lead can be a wonderful thing - Or a pre-fade verb on a harmony - Or about 4 billion other things).

And if they can't handle the heat and you *need* doubles or triples, multing the track and detuning & delaying slightly can give a similar effect.

 

[sleepy]

I always like having different takes to play with also.

How you track will depend on the vocalist too. I've put together verses with a ton of different takes. But this will only work if the vocalist is very consistent and is not trying to experiment the whole time. If you have a part that sounds monotonous and all of a sudden the vocalist sounds full of energy things are going to sound odd.

Everyone has their own style of mixing. Some people like getting good double and panning one hard left and hard right with the ad libs on the center. Some people like to record one take and get two ad libs tracks and have one ad lib panned left and the other ad lib panned right. Me, I like to keep vocals centered unless it's a singer in a chorus in which case I like to do play around with the panning.