📑 Sections (7)

5. Doubles, harmonies and growls

When to double the vocal, how to record simple harmonies, and how to look after the level and your throat with screamed and growled vocals.

With the lead vocal sorted, extra layers give the choruses size. They’re optional: a solid lead vocal alone works perfectly well. Add them if the song asks for them, not out of habit.

Doubles: size for the chorus

A double means singing the same line again, on another take. Just as with guitars, the small differences in performance are what create the size. Copying the track and shifting it doesn’t work: it sounds like an effect and not two voices.

How to record a double

  • Sing it the same as the lead: same breaths, same cutoffs and same final consonants.
  • With the lead playing in the headphones, to follow it closely.
  • Two doubles if they go to the sides, panned left and right, one per side.
  • One double in the center, very low, if you only want to thicken it a little.

Where to use them: in the choruses and on specific phrases. If you double the whole song, the verses lose their intimacy and the chorus has nowhere to grow.

Harmonies

  • Start simple: one harmony a third above the melody, only in the chorus.
  • Sing them softer than the lead and a bit further from the mic, about 30 cm. They blend better.
  • Double each harmony if you’re going to spread it to the sides: one take left and another right.
  • Careful consonants: the “s” and “t” of several voices together stand out a lot. If needed, sing them softer on the harmonies, or edit them later.

Screamed and growled vocals

Here the problem is level and your throat, not pitch.

The technical setup

  • Lower the gain on the iD44 with the loudest part. A screamed vocal can jump far above the rest.
  • Mic pad at −5 or −10 dB if, with the gain low, it still gets close to clipping.
  • A separate track from the clean vocals, because the processing will be different.
  • Always use the pop filter: at that distance and with that much air, a strong voice hits the capsule directly.
  • Distance: as close as feels natural with the pop filter in between. Experiment until you find what sounds biggest without saturating.
🔵 Can wait· in recording

Doubles and harmonies add something, but the song works without them. They can be recorded after a first mix, once you know whether they're needed. The only thing not worth putting off is separating growls and clean vocals onto different tracks.

Chorus double for this sectionPending — this one is on you

If you want to add the size example, record two doubles of the chorus vocal of the guide song, at 110 BPM. They go in prodmus_frontend/public/audio/voz/, as estribillo-voz.wav, estribillo-doble-L.wav and estribillo-doble-R.wav.

Format: WAV 24-bit / 48 kHz, mono, with peaks of −12 to −6 dBFS. With those three files I can publish the A/B with and without doubles.

Common mistakes

What NOT to chase yet

Quick path: layers

Quick path

  1. Decide whether the song asks for them. If not, carry on without them.
  2. Doubles: same line, same breath, with the lead playing.
  3. Two doubles for the sides, only in the choruses.
  4. A simple harmony a third up, softer and a bit further away.
  5. Growls on a separate track, with the gain low and the pad if needed.
  6. Little time, at the end of the session.

Expected result

Expected result

The layers the song needs, in time with the lead and on separate tracks. Alone they can sound weak: what matters is what they add. You now have everything recorded. What’s left is to put it in order: editing and the final version.