By Frank Lubsey


Hip hop is not just about instrumental beats. It is also about powerful vocals! In this music genre, an effective technique to engage the attention of listeners and to make rap lines more interesting is through vocal doubling. Hip hop and rock commonly involve vocal doubling. This transforms a song into a wonderful combination of words and instrumental beats that allows it to captivate its listeners. The primary goal of this technique is to make the main vocal rap more powerful. This can be applied to a choice of word for emphasis, to a single line, a verse or even the entire song. But there are a few ground rules that you should observe to make sure that you are doing it right.

Select the best take and use it as the lead. If you've produced a hip hop track before, you know that a lot of takes are involved before recording is complete. Always prepare for recording by hydrating to keep your vocal cords in top shape. Keeping the mic at the same distance throughout recording will ensure you get even volume levels. Target yourself to perform your best during takes. If you can sing the whole track or even a verse on a single take, prepare and go for it. After a couple of takes, listen to your vocals and select the best and use it as the lead.

Rule #2. Find A Double For Your Lead Rap. After all the takes that you made to find the best lead vocals, you can compile all others which are good and use it as a 2nd or 3rd version for your double. But, if you venture into it, you can double the lead line by rapping as close to it as possible. This means, another take. One tip that can help you produce a record similar to the previous one is to keep one headset on and one off. This way, you can listen to the original rap while recording 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.

Listen to the final production. After mixing the vocal doubles, it's now time to listen to the final production. If you follow the instructions mentioned above, you will easily create vocal doubles that blend well. If the final recording is not what you are targeting, more practice might be necessary to prefect doubling. A great way is to practice using the beats and instrumentals at the same time as training your vocals.




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