Vocal Production Tip: Backing Vocals Using One Microphone
Jun 16, 2009 5:36 PM, By Richard James
The best-sounding harmonies often come from a group of individuals simultaneously harmonizing around a single microphone. While that's not physically possible for the solo home-studio harmonist, one approach is to send your recorded individual harmony parts to a loudspeaker and then mic that up in a room. The same technique can be used to create stereo backing vocals by panning a combination of closely miked and ambient room tracks.
For example, if you have four individual backing vocals, send the first and second tracks to a speaker and record it both close up and with a room mic. Record both of those mics to their own separate tracks. Pan the recorded close-up mic to the left, and pan the room mic to the right. Repeat the process with the remaining set of backing vocals, but pan them in the opposite direction: the close-up speaker track to the right and the room mic to the left.
Some may argue that this approach will lead to a loss in audio fidelity, but it’s often preferable to make your backing vocals sound different from the lead parts. And to paraphrase the great Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick, if you want things to sound different, you have to do things differently.
AUTHOR'S AUDIO EXAMPLE OF THE BACKING VOCALS RECORDED ON ONE MICROPHONE
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