August 16, 2013

4 Ways To Make Vocal Doubling In Hip Hop Better

By Frank Lubsey


Hip hop is not just about instrumental beats. It is also about powerful vocals! In this music genre, an effective technique to engage the attention of listeners and to make rap lines more interesting is through vocal doubling. Hip hop and rock commonly involve vocal doubling. This transforms a song into a wonderful combination of words and instrumental beats that allows it to captivate its listeners. The primary goal of this technique is to make the main vocal rap more powerful. This can be applied to a choice of word for emphasis, to a single line, a verse or even the entire song. But there are a few ground rules that you should observe to make sure that you are doing it right.

Use the best take as the lead. Recording a hip hop track involves a lot of takes. Before hitting the recording studio, ensure that your voice is at its best. Hydrating to keep the vocal cords lubricated is an easy way to do this. When singing, keep the mic at a constant distance throughout the recording. Compiling your track will be much easier if you perform your best during takes. If you believe that you can complete the entire verse or even track on a single take, prepare for it and then go for it. After a couple of good takes, select the best take and use it as the lead.

Find a double for your lead. After selecting the best take for your lead, listen to the other takes made and select them in the order of close similarity to your lead. However, if free styling or flowing is your thing, it might be harder finding takes that are close to same. In this instance, you will have to make another take rapping as close as you can to the lead. A great technique used by most artists is wearing only one headset when making their takes. This allows them listen to the original lead and simultaneously record its double.

Keep the doubles hidden from the listeners. The goal of vocal doubling is hiding the double by making the lead prominent. That is, there won't be the illusion of doubling within the track. To do this, keep the volume of the double significantly lower than that of the lead during recording. A popular way of doing this is keeping the double loudness at 10 to 12dB. This makes the double vocals louder without exposing the fact that it's a double. Vocal doubling can be used to create a spacious effect. To do this, 2 doubles are used. Pan one double .10 seconds to the right and the other .10 seconds to the left. This delays the track by .10 seconds on one part as well as times it to start .10 second early.

Rule #4. Listen to the Final Mix. After working hard to make sure that the outcome of the recording will be up to your standards, it is time to listen to what you just did. If the double does not blend well with the lead, you might need to rehearse more to master doubling. Rehearsing to instrumental beats while practicing your vocals would be a great way to gain mastery of vocal doubling.




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