Harmonies

[Greeny]

Say Greeny how do you set guitar effects on your voice?  I didnt' know you could do that!!

Easy peasy - when singing with the MIC input, if you press "effects" it automatically shows the MC effects. However, move the cursor to wher"MC" is displayed, press +/- and you cycle through the different effects, eg press - and you get GT, so you can then choose any guitar effect. You can also use mastering effects as well, which I use to change the eq a lot on things like bass.

Cheers,

Nigel

You beat me to it! Lol.

I only discovered this a few months ago myself, and it was a bit of a revelation - especially to someone who loves distorted, psychedelic vocals. Just another great little tip / trick that I picked up on here!

[SdC]

For that "wall of soud" feeling, use varying amounts and rates of "Chorus". Really widens up the soundscape, excellent for vox because it doesn't fundamentally change the tone/sound

[AndyR]

It depends on the type of song and the effect I'm trying to achieve but I've got a variety of "rules of thumb" that I've picked up over the years. I agree with Geir though, all rules are made to be broken 

If it's a single harmony with the lead vocal, a "dual lead" type thing, then I'll pan the two leads slightly. Not done this on the MBR yet, but if I was about to try it, my starting point would be L15 and R15 and see what it sounds like. For me, it really depends on the quality of the vocals I managed to sing and the musical distance between the parts - I'd try to pan them as far away as I could before they start to sound "separate" (assuming I didn't want "separate" in the first place!)

If it's, say, 2 part backing vox that go with the lead, typically I'd record 2 of each part. I'd pan both parts right and left, but by different amounts. I tend to put the low pair nearer the middle, eg L20=R20, and the high pair wider eg L40=R40. Sometimes this might mean that you need another high pair (four voices in all on the higher part) to smooth it out because the separation has either revealed "inconsistencies" in the singing or made it sound a bit thin.

Unless you want them to, don't let the backing vox get in the way of the lead vox - one of the ways of doing this taking a LOT of bottom end out of the backing vox. When you're really having to work it hard at production stage, you can consider taking a slight upper-mid cut out of one (usually the backing vox), with an exactly equal boost at the same frequency on the other.

Another trick is to have completely different reverb on the lead and the backing vox. I tend to use bright and long reverbs on backing vox at the moment.

What usually seems to happen to me is that I create rich and warm layers of backing vocals. But then these don't do the job they're designed for in the mix, until I "sabotage" them with EQ and reverb choices - listening to the backing vox on their own after the processing is vile, tinny, scratchy, echoey, etc, none of the rich nuances I sang... but put this in the mix and it sounds lush and doesn't overpower the lead.

Something I learnt from a sound-engineer years ago, DO NOT have the backing vox (or any vox) too loud!  After you've spent hours recording the "choir" to your satisfaction, and it's sounding really good, the temptation is to really push it in the mix. This engineer (in an effort to restrain me, the "artiste", from insisting on putting the vox too loud) showed me a little trick - set up a rough mix then turn the master way down low so you can hardly hear the recording. The backing vocals must disappear before everything else does, if they don't, they're too loud for "normal" vocal effect. The same can be applied to the lead vocal. It's really all personal taste, you need to practice to gain your own experience on what works for you, but I've found that this "turning the mix down" technique useful for establishing levels of almost anything in relation to the rest of the recording.
 

[Farrell Jackson]

This is an old thread and some really good ideas and techniques have been listed about getting that "wall of sound" for backing vocals and harmonies so no need to cover those again. The biggest thing I've found for the "wall of sound" affect is to have lots of vocals. Physically double and even triple the individual parts. I use high and low vocals with high giving the sheen and the low bringing the fullness. I use the panning technique that Geir mentioned of panning the parts equal to each side but I don't place the high and low parts per side in the same position. So each side has a high and low vocal track but they are different takes. Panning them farther away from one another reduces the chorus effect and removing some of the low end EQ lets them stand out in the mix without over powering the other tracks. I've used most of the techniques mentioned here but for the "wall of sound" you need a lot of vocal takes.

Farrell

[T.C. Elliott]

 This is a subject that needs more input. Actually, the advice here is a good place to start. I recently did a mixing job on a friends tracks. I'm very, very happy with my mixing with one exception. The backing vocals. So I've got a way to go to be a pro, it seems. 

A couple of thoughts. Well recorded good performances certainly help. Being in key helps, too.  I tend to hard pan the backing vocals either all left or all right for balance but that is a matter of taste. Sometimes blending them at 33% each way or 50% each way will work better.

As a rule for the lead vocal I prefer a short delay without many repeats for space rather than reverb, although I use both. For the backing vocals I've tended to stick with the reverb for space. I'm not sure if this is right or good or not.

As for the melody of the harmony, I think playing around and finding a complimentary melody is key. I often like to start with holding out a note from the main melody to create a harmony vocal, or to go stepwise in the opposite direction in a note or a few, but in general staying close to the main melody. I've even recorded the main melody on the keyboard and then looped it while I found a complimentary melody that was partially unison and partly not. That seems to work when I actually have a keyboard around to use.

The biggest thing for me, though, is the eq and separation. I find that if I do my own harmony tracks the tone of the different vocal tracks are too close. So I've started to eq different space. The telephone effect on the harmony, for instance (cutting the very high end and the very low end to make it mostly midrangy.) Also, I prefer, even if I write the harmony lines, to get a different voice to do those lines. It's easier for me to mix in and out. I should probably start asking some of you all to do those lines for me as I hardly ever get off my ass and ask for help.

Anyway, a few thoughts and the firm acknowledgement that I need more help, too.

[leighelse]

My approach varies depending on what I'm doing.

I quite often have a single harmony - think Indigo Girls - and will usually record this twice and pan it just slightly left and right, roll off a bit of the top and bottom ends. An example is Howling at the Sun.

Sometimes I do want a wall of sound, so I'll plan perhaps seven separate harmonies and map these out on manuscript paper. As well as the obvious intervals, I'll add sixths and ninths, etc (in some cases I'll position these lower in the mix, though). I'll usually record each harmony four times, which can be 28 tracks. Recording that many tracks is a chore, but it can work well. An example is Faded Heart Café. I can't see me doing this on the BR1600, mind you.

I have a tendency to use harmonies to mask poor lead vocals. I'm not much of a singer, and I mostly write music in my head rather than with an instrument, and it's all too common to end up with something I can neither sing nor play. Judiciously used, harmonies can support and draw attention away from a poor vocal to some extent. An example is Aotearoa where the vocal is well beyond my range: the start of the song is too low and the end is too high. The harmonies don't cure that, but I think they cushion it a little.

::Leigh