Hey guys

Was wondering if anyone had any ideas on the concept of taking a voice and duplicating it or somehow filling it out so it sounds like a gospel choir arrangement.

Obviously getting a choir like sound isn't the easiest thing without getting access to a number of vocalists but I would be interested to know if anyone has any suggestions or if there is any good software in particular for mac that would stand out.

I was thinking of having a female vocalist record background vocals slightly differently each time then combining the takes and seeing what comes of it.

I know I won't be able to get that genuine sound but any help would be appreciated as a more complex background vocal arrangement would really stand out and sound that little bit richer in production value and I'm wondering if anyone has had some experience with this.

 

Some things I would try in that situation:

Apart from doin some harmonies, make the singer use some clearly different styles in the various takes (stronger, smoother, a bit choppy, flowing…) and use some different mic's if you can.

Use a harmonizer and/or pitch shifting tool like Nectar to manipulate and get more variations from the single takes.

Use some different fx when you're mixing the various vocal tracks (more/less reverb/delay/chorus/saturation...)

Try to use some samples or Kontakt choir lib's to layer the background sound (can of course be hard if your choir part has very specific lyrics).

If you're not a really horrible singer, record some tracks with your own voice and mix them in the background. Even a track with just one steady note will help to fatten the sound, and of course you can use all the same manipulation on your tracks as the ones with the 'real' singer.

You'll probly end up quite a bit from a real gospel choir anyway, but may still get a nice rich result that you like. Good luck with your work

 

iZotope's NECTAR (see AudioZ to test it out) struck me as an ideal plug for this (and many other vocal jobs) rather than other 1 trick ponies such as :- ChoirsX VST for eg.

[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOyZRqJw24g[/media]

but theres more than 1 way to skin (up) a cat
ie Antares Harmony or using any chorus plugin.

Google "how to create a choir from 1 voice" and you'll get a plethora of how to's, app specific tutorials & various vst suggestions.

 

Thanks for the tips. Yeah the problems come when you want to lay down something with lyrics and not just the stock harmonies from a lot of these libraries. Appreciate the feedback and I'll look into doing what you've suggested.

Dude that would be extremely helpful. Love to have a play around with a plugin like that if you can remember the name.

 

ChoirsX vst is a dedicated (osx) plug that looks simple as anything to use but if I were you I'd learn how to do it on Izotopes NECTAR as that will produce most likely a better result and be extremely useful for any furture vocal (or instrument) tweaks n twists you can imagine (probably a lot more fun to use as well, especially compared to a chorus or reverb based plug.)
See the vid in my 1st post and here's a demo of Nectar
[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDXnfT-M5Jk[/media]

 

Prodyon Enchoir Vocal Harmonizer VST

 

Duplicate that particular vocal track in like 5 track for this example (but you can try even more than that). keep track 1 in the middle, track 2 panned 50% in the right (placed later by 15-20ms against the track 1 and pitched down/detuned subtly, just a few cents, not even half a semitone!), track 3 panned 95% in the left (this one placed earlier like 15-20ms against track 1 and pitched up/detuned subtly as well just a few cents), track 4 panned 95% in the right (placed like 25 ms later against track 1, pitched up a few semitones as a harmony, depending on the chord or scale the vocals should be singing in that arrangement region) track 5 panned 50% in the left (placed like 15ms earlier against track 1, pitched up the same semitones as track 4 but subtly detuned with a few cents as well so it won't sound the same).
Check how all of these sounds like and you can add more tracks if you need that choir effect bigger, experimenting some extra low or different harmonies and placements, even some slightly volume modulation could help on a few tracks to fake that expression feeling, you can also duplicate track 1(middle) as well and add the ADT Waves plugin as a doubler and make sure you mute the "source" signal or bringing it down alot so it won't clash that much with the track 1 keeping only the sides, and this way you can get this track doubled and modulated against the other tracks in a slightly different way, which will enhance more the chorus effect.
The key here is... the more you use different approaches for every track, the more chorus-like will sound.

I'm not the best on speaking English bro... but i hope you feel me.

 

Sounds a bit "synthy" in the demo, although I have read that it is a quality plug it also seems more suited to harmonies rather than reproducing a large choir from 1 voice, maybe multiple tracks would work?.
Not sure if the OP only wanted a mac compatible plug as this isn't.

Either way I'm grabbing it so thanks for the info

(I didn't mean to come across negative even though I have.)

Prodyon Enchoir Vocal Harmonizer VST here btw:-

Enchoir Vocal Harmonizer VST @ AudioZ

p.s. Cat sorry if posting links to audioz is a dumb move. i'm thinking it is but not 100% so plz delete it if so (and this msg from p.s. to end), thanks.

 

Is this ChoirsX available anywhere?

 

I have 2 links (Filefactory and Uploaded) for a 2010 Soundspectral Pack which includes Windows versions of:-


SoundSpectral.VocTuneX.v1.0-UNION
SoundSpectral.DoublerX.v2.0-UNION
SoundSpectral.MaxBwide.v1.1-UNION
& of course
SoundSpectral.ChoirsX.v2.0-UNION

I will pm you the links.

 

Turk. A million thanks!

 

I've done this, I recorded myself about 30 times to re-create the choir effect of UK national anthem, but being an anti-monarchist i had to re-write the lyrics of course

Here it is, the true UK national anthem, but you'll never hear it aired on the airwaves cos it's the truth '0)

 

SoundSpectral.ChoirsX.v2.0 & Prodyon Enchoir Vocal Harmonizer VST <---- how do they work??????

The only one I´ve tried that worked was this one!!! You just plug it in and tweek, thats all!

Harmony4

 

For me nothing compares to make the real voices harmony, usyslly 3 vocals for each voice.
But if you wanna make some auto harmonizer the best results are with melodyne, other can be faster but do no have the same quality.
In my studio a lot of singers wants to make harminies that they do not make live, so we have to make some magic because they do not know harmony.
A good course about traditional choral harmony teaches a lot and real knoledge or art you do not obtain with auto things.
When I do the vocals of a song I spend a day only to arrange and record, and yes, good notaion skills are a must.
So the great vocal records became from hard work, auto just for lazy ones , for the runners or the out-of-tune

 

Id go with nectar 2, if you know what your doing, it can produce some amazing results.

 

Yep.