Wednesday, August 21, 2013

4 Rules To Improve Vocal Doubling In Hip Hop Production

By Frank Lubsey


The hip hop music genre involves much more than the use of awesome beats and instrumentals. It also involves the use of powerful vocals. Vocal doubling is a technique used in hip hop lyrics to attract and retain the listener's attention and make the track more pleasant to listen to. This technique is commonly used in both rap and rock. Vocal doubling brings together lyrics, beats and instrumentals creating and interesting track. Its main goal is making the main lyrics more prominent. It can be applied on parts of or throughout the song. Here are 4 ways to ensure that you are using vocal doubling the right way.

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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