Recording and posting a Chant/Crowd chorus

[Prime Mover]

Hey, sorry, not QUITE DP related, but I thought it might generation some good discussion.

I'm thinking of producing a track that has sort of a chant/crowd type chorus. Using just my own voice, and maybe a few friends, what would be a good way of pulling this off, and making it sound like a bunch of people shouting words together. I've thought of taking a pair of mics outside and just shouting at them from different locations and in different voices. But are there any other ideas of what might make it sound fuller?

[sibsound]

I once tried something similar. I managed to get 6 people to help and recorded them all singing at the same time using one mic about 3 feet away (in a small dry sounding room). Then overdubbed them lots more times, encouraging everyone to put on a different voice and getting them to change places each time so the mic picked up a slightly different blend. Panned each take to a different place, added some hall reverb and it sounded pretty good. Not as huge and distant as a stadium crowd type of sound but in the context of a pop tune it worked perfectly, it was big but the lyrics were still intelligible.

I also remember reading about a plug-in designed to simulate a big crowd, but never tried it myself:
http://www.quikquak.com/Prod_CrowdChamber.html

[HCMarkus]

Why not post a clip and have people submit their solo chants on line?
"I'd like to teach the world to chant, in pefect harmony..."

Then have a Pepsi. *irony*

[stephentayler]

As you keep adding layers, try singing/shouting in different accents... it makes a huge difference. Make sure to include a few Australians!!

Also a good idea is to add a vocoder in order to treat a large sports crowd with your own voices, that can sound huge if you mix in just enough beneath the real voices.


Cheers

Stephen

[zed]

I'm thinking of producing a track that has sort of a chant/crowd type chorus.

Possible tools to assist in this process?

Speakerphone.

[Tim]

Whisper (voice minus pitch).

[Armageddon]

It's not going to sound very full in an outdoor situation (unless you're trying to mimic an outdoor crowd, then, just forget this post altogether), because there's nothing for the sound to reflect off of. Try a very large room with bare walls and as little furniture as possible in it to absorb sound waves, then try placing the mic(s) far enough away from you and your friends to catch the room sound and reflections, but close enough to capture the actual voices. Blend two or three takes of this, then run them or bus them through a hall reverb (if you have Waves' TrueVerb, I recommend "Enclosed Coliseum") with the early reflections turned off (so you don't muddy that live room reflection you recorded), should wind up sounding pretty big.

[bootsncats]

I did it with just me, shifting the formant slightly, different accents, like an old lady, southern, drunk guy in the back. It took a lot of tracks to do it but it worked. I then ran it through verb to get it in the space I wanted. I learned that from a beck video talking about the song "where its at."

[philbrown]

I learned a trick a long time ago when doing these kinds of layering - at the time it was about layering BG vox. Each take I move the mic around in the room and even change mics/mic pres. Helps to avoid phasing later as you bring all these tracks up in the mix.

Cheers
Phil

[musicarteca]

Another trick: Lets say that you record three stereo tracks, duplicate those tracks and an then edit them cutting a few seconds at the beginning, sliding the remaining soundbite to the beginning and pasting the cut part at the end, the effect will be as doubling them. If the recording is a few minutes long and if you start at different spots, you can do this many times, with a multiplying effect. Try to cut a few seconds instead of milliseconds to avoid the possibility of phasing or delay type repeating effect.

[waxman]

Try your best to keep the ambient noise down... 50 tracks of the same ambient noise will be overwhelming...
use bass roll off when recording on all but a few tracks. Bass vanishes in an outdoor environment. Use as many different mics as possible. Get an image in your mind of the environment and setting and stick to it. Listen carefully to some recordings with the crowd in the mix in. Think chaotic rather then big in terms of sound. mostly upper mid and highs. Pick a few voices that maybe you do record outside that have more full range. Those will sound closer. Then use some reverb and delays for others. If you use grouping you can get a feel of front to back. Good luck this is no easy task...

[musicarteca]

If you are not shouting something specific you can always use libraries, there are thousands of high quality, royalty free, crowd sounds on the internet that you can buy for a few dollars or even for free, you can use them alone or to fatten up your recording.

[Armageddon]

For my album, I used several sound effects CDs with crowds/audiences for "crowd" effects. Usually, I had to layer two or three different crowds, sometimes from different collections, and vary the amount of reverb send, so that part of the crowd sounded farther away. Another good place to snag audience sounds is any live album ... especially if you layer it with either recorded voices or specific crowd sound effects.

[pencilina]

I do this all the time... Try stereo mics spaced apart in a room with a loop set for the section you want the big chorus and record using Polar. Then move around the mics for each pass. You'll hear the layers build up and if you set polar to automatically create a new track for each pass you can mix them later.

[waxman]

Man that is genius... Polar... on the fly figure 8 mic... wow that just went in the memory bank