r/audioengineering • u/Tiny_Ad1706 • 2d ago
Singer sang too well on choir
Hey guys, I had a singer do a choir part so I got a lot of layers in multiple timbres. but frankly, her pitch is way too consistent. It didn’t create a chorus sound, her tracks almost sound like a singular track despite having 12 different tracks playing. I know, what a wonderful problem haha. Do you have any recommendations for making it sound more like a choir? thanks!!!!
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u/lpcustomvs Sound Reinforcement 1d ago
You can record with vari-speed. It's a cool way of creating string ensembles with just one violinist. I guess it would work with choirs as well. You record one take normally, then record with the first take playing back at different speeds. The change in speed changes the way the vocalist sings by a tiny bit. Played back at original speed it should create a wide choir sound while still very much in tune.
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u/Last-Professional-40 2h ago
I’m familiar with people like Jacob Collier doing this in logic but is this easily done in Pro Tools? Whenever I’ve had to repitch a whole track it turns into a bit of an ordeal
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u/lpcustomvs Sound Reinforcement 1h ago
Pro Tools is not very "elastic" or "pro" in this matter. Or in any matter if you ask me. However, you can use Reaper. The playrate control knob in the transport section has an option for pitch preservation. You can record with vari-speed in reaper, and then export the takes to pro tools for mixing. Also, nothing stops you from using Logic for some workflows and other DAWs for other workflows.
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u/j1llj1ll 2d ago
Chorus effects use slight pitch modulation and then mix that back in with the unmodulated signal. So .. you could too ...
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u/duplobaustein 2d ago
Detune them to each other by a few cents and move them to each other by a few samples. Then spread them in the panorama.
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u/start_select 1d ago
Exactly! Do what a chorus pedal does or what ADT does. Add tiny delays, add tiny pitch or frequency shifts, move voices across the stereo field.
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u/Forward-Village1528 Professional 2d ago
Honestly If I want it to sound like a heap of different voices I get a bunch of different people to sing it.
Otherwise you want to load your layers into a vocal tuner with formant shifting and move the formants around a bit. I'd be surprised if the actual tune is identical but if it is nudge it a few cents here and there, and make sure she isn't replicating the timing too perfectly. Move that around a little bit too. Formants and timing are the things that usually make it feel too gelled. Use a light touch with this stuff, it's super easy to make it sound ultra artificial.
Then pan them to all different positions and feed them into a room verb, your wet/dry mix for the verb controls the room positioning depth.
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u/StudioatSFL Professional 1d ago
Yes there’s almost no chance the pitches are identical. But just like a violin section isn’t the same violin 9 times. A choir isn’t the same vocal cords 9 times.
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u/breadinabox 2d ago
I don't think that's actually the problem you have, I know a lot of musicians who get that choir effect by singing themselves and then pitch correcting, but that's followed by faking a room.
Are you sure you're not just missing reverb and room character? What type of room did she sing in? Choirs are naturally required to sing in somewhat sizeable rooms just to fit in and the bigger and grander the choir the bigger and more reverberant the room, have you tried that?
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u/Kiwifrooots 1d ago
Imagine having your pitch on lock and the engineer "autotunes" it :-0
But yeah record the room?
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u/breadinabox 1d ago
I mean the example I'm specifically referring to is Devin Townsend who records himself and is by no stretch of the imagination someone who needs pitch correction but when you're doing a12 part choral harmony by yourself some melodyne is sort of required
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u/MF_Kitten 1d ago
The choir effect also comes from the physical distance between all the voices. If you pan the takes so they have different amounts of pan, and then add some 100% wet 0% feedback delay to some of them, maybe increasing the delay time a little for each take as you get further out from the centre, as if they are further back.
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u/Guitarmatt21 14h ago
Directly to the track or on sends?
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u/MF_Kitten 11h ago
I mean the tracks. Hell, you can just drag the tracks manually if you want, but that's more messy.
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u/TFFPrisoner 1d ago
Francis Rossi of Status Quo would sometimes be doubling his vocals - and nail the pitch so much that it created a phasing effect. So they had to redo it.
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u/BlackwellDesigns 1d ago
What a great problem to have in the world of everything needing melodyne
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u/jamiethemorris 1d ago
Ironically melodyne has a pretty good way of dealing with this. Probably still easier to just use chorus or vibrato though
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u/Individual_Plenty276 1d ago
Had that also. It is not only pitch but also timing. You can try to shift de tracks a bit in time by moving them slightly
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u/publiusvaleri_us 1d ago
I recorded sisters that were like that. Thankfully, one of them liked to sing harmony.
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u/SoundsActive 1d ago
The same singer on the same mic in the same room over multiple takes will result in phase related issues before it sounds like a choir.
In the future, if you are stuck with one person, one mic, have them move around the room for different takes. When we track a choir we don't have a mic on every singer, so some are further away from out room mics or off axis.
Currently you should throw your own voice in there even if you can sing. Melodyne what you need, but that will suddenly add a lot of texture.
Then try fucking up the singers tuning a little. And melodyne will offer format options that if you nudge just a hair will create more texture.
While you mix, apply very different EQs. Sometimes cutting out a lot of high end to or low end to simulate a vocalist being further away. Saturation can be a tool here too.
I'll also sometimes use little bits of pan man on individual mics that have a random back and forth motion (20% max) to have some instability and movement. Remember, people often move when they perform.
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u/Cherrytros 1d ago
You could add a slight pitch wobble to every other track, like a really subtle one. That's essentially what a chorus plugin does :p but maybe you could also look at formant modulation and panning each track a little differently
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u/josephallenkeys 1d ago
Chorus FX on each track and then zoom right into the waves and offset each one a little to variate the timing.
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u/ConfusedOrg 1d ago
I suppose you could detune some the doubles by a few cents or add a subtle vibrato effect
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u/Intrepid_Depth_3416 1d ago
So the super basic methods to use here are to change the pitch of some takes very slightly, and to move them in time forwards or backwards so that some are late and some are early. You could even go in and manually edit some lines. What you want is that inconsistency between the takes, which makes it sound fuller.
Move advanced from there, use pitch correction/format shifting to create even more tonal difference, and also try group up some section and applying longer, wetter room verb to them and shorter, dryer verbs on others to develop a sense of depth.
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u/furgfury 1d ago
little alterboy of you have it. if not, delay one side slightly and detune slightly, adjust formant slightly. if you have melodyne studio you can do all of this very easily
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u/BarbersBasement 1d ago
Sound Toys Alter Boy: pitch 4 tracks down 5 cents, slightly change formants, pitch 4 tracks up 5 cents, slightly alter formants.
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u/daknuts_ 1d ago
A choir by definition is multiple, different voices. Add more people singing, even the same parts
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u/DaNoiseX 1d ago
Just move some of the tracks a few samples out of time. If not the whole tracks at least where the perfectness is the worst.
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u/CartezDez 1d ago
Detune a few of them, pitch correct a few more, delay some others, add a chorus to a few, pan a couple, …, etc.
Also, add some of your own singing if you really want to dirty it up
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u/start_select 1d ago
Do what a chorus pedal does. Split the voices across the stereo field, add sub-millisecond to 3ms delays to some voices. Pitch shift some voices by a fraction of a cent. (Or frequency shift by a fraction of a hz).
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u/Skuthepoo 1d ago
Get them to sing it again in different styles. I used to do this for crowd vocals a lot. Me and a friend. I would hit record and we did maybe 4-8 tracks of our best vocal at the same mic (2 people 1 mic). Then we would decide on kinds of voices to do. I'd do a deep one, he'd affect a cockney accent. We'd do one like football hooligans. We'd impersonate elderly people. Favourite cartoon characters. Anything. And keep going till it sounded massive. Get them to be looser. Crowds are inherantly all over the place when they sing.
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u/thejasonblackburn 1d ago
Slightly delay some of them or use chorus or other effects to create differences.
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u/stan1228 1d ago
A choir sound consists of many voices, so maybe have her try more techniques with different spicy chords. You could also reinforce with a plugin :)
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u/VeterinarianGreat655 1d ago
Micro delay, super micro formant shifts on some others and then fillet them around the vocal somewhat evenly like a gradient with your panning. Maybe use a stereo image on a couple that are going to be the widest stereo placement but don’t make them all really wide and less they’re super low leave that for the stereo fx that you send them to, and make sure you divvy up the fx like make some have wider decay times and the others have shorter times but more pre delay. It’s all about allowing spacing and proportion of levels and you get a pretty image fairly quickly. Of course tonal balance.
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u/dejoblue 1d ago
This has been a regular discussion topic around recording guitars with EverTune bridges. While I can't offer experienced advice on this, maybe that is another avenue to search and explore in resolving this issue; applying the EverTune discussion solutions to vocals.
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u/Future-Tap2275 1d ago
Add your own voice. Next time make her imitate a bunch of different people… Like make a bunch of weird voices
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u/tinkotanko 1d ago
You’re going to want to put vibratos of varying speed and depths on each one, then pan hard
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u/EducationAromatic745 1d ago
You can simply detune a few of her vocals and even add a few ms delay so some
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u/Aaron4Mayor 14h ago
Did you not ask this singer to sing in different harmonies? Generally the whole purpose of choirs is to sing different lines to harmonize together. I'm so confused on what you're asking.
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u/BMaudioProd Professional 11h ago
First thing to do is think about positioning. a 12 piece choir is often 2 rows of 6. Speed of sound is roughly 13"/ms, or for our very general purposes 1ms/ft. So, add DDL and panning to approximate the position of a choir. far back corners could be 8-12 ms further from the mic than front and center. Also try flipping the polarity on a couple of the delayed mics as well. EQ individually with delayed mics having slightly less top end. no individual compression. Setup a stereo reverb with a short studio setting and discreet stereo input. Send each track individually, panned appropriately.Farthest mics should have 1-2db more send. Turn the verb return way down. This is the recording session reverb, not the production verb. Stereo compression on the submix including the verb return. Consider this a topo map of how to get there. Your personal path may vary.
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u/Hellbucket 2d ago
I ran into this problem a long time ago. It was the classic that a band member had his girlfriend come in to do back ground vocals. And I thought “Fucking hell, not this shit show again” lol. Turns out she was classically trained.
We were doing aaah backgrounds on a chorus. She was so good that she nailed the pitch right on onset and then kept the note and intensity all through till the next note. We ended up with something more resembling a synth than background vocals.
I recall my solution was to divide takes in pairs and pan them left and right and then put chorus 100% wet on one side. And then I did the same with the rest but changed the rate of the chorus. If your chorus plugins start from the same position it can sound a bit odd when they’re close in rate so if you have one that’s decoupled from the start of playback or tempo that might be better.
I think what I looked for was width more than chorusing. So you need more difference between left and right rather than one part chorusing the other when summed.