Doubling Tips

I use doubling on my own voice very frequently.  It is part of my style.  If you want to do some doubling, here are some techniques I use.  Maybe they will help—but be warned that the first two are a lot of work and they both require Melodyne or V-Vocal.  In my examples, I will refer to Melodyne.
 
Technique 1:
1-Record your vocal and use Melodyne to correct it as needed.  Sloppy vocals will not work well for doubling.  I hand correct every note.  I never auto-correct.
2-Drag a copy of the uncorrected (source) vocal to another track.  Delay it 10 to 20 ms.  EVEN BETTER: delay some clips and move some forward.  Example: Slide clips 1,3,5,7, etc forward and clips 2,4,6,8, etc. backwards.  If you know the tempo of your song and the number of ticks per quarter note, your calculator can work out how many ticks equal a given number of milliseconds.  If you shift more than 30 ms, the result will sound less like doubling and more like two people, which is also cool if that's what you're going for.
3-Hand correct the second vocal in Melodyne.  Move some notes up a few cents and some notes down a few cents. Use your ears, but I find less than 5 cents is not enough variation and more than 10 is too much, but it all depends on your voice, how thick it is, and how high it is, etc.  ( Example: Highlight the first phrase and type +7 in the pitch box at the top.  Highlight the second phrase and type -7.)  If you use the pitch variation and pitch drift tools to reduce waver and drift, chances are you will not change the second copy exactly as you did the first—which is good.  Use the timing tool to stretch or shrink notes that don't end together.  A little bit off is good, but you don't want it to sound messy.
4-Pan the voices about 20% to 40% left and right for a cool ADT sound.  Go 100% left and right if you want it to sound more like two people. 
 
IF YOU ARE GOING TO MOVE A CLIP IN TIME, MOVE IT BEFORE YOU USE MELODYNE.  Once you have transferred to Melodyne, you could move the clip to another universe and it wouldn't matter because you would only hear the Melodyne copy.
 
Technique 2:
Sing the vocal twice on two separate tracks and hand correct the pitch and timing to get them close to each other.
 
Technique 3:
Use a TC Helicon VoiceWorks Plus outboard device (or an Eventide, if you have one).  I find that with the TC, you need to keep one natural voice and then add in one or more from the TC.  If you only have the TC output, it may not sound 100% natural (which may be OK for some styles but not mine).
 
Another trick for Technique 1:  Instead of moving some clips forward in time and some clips back, you can also just move one whole track a bit forward and one a bit back, then use automation to switch which one is left and right from phrase to phase.  (Make sure you don't sweep the pan during the singing unless you want a psychedelic effect.)
My most common technique is #2 because I do multiple vocal takes and usually have two takes that are pretty close.
 
If I only have one vocal take I really like, or if the two best vocal takes are phrased differently, then I go with #1.
 
The TC is awesome and I used to use it all the time, but lately I have been doing stuff more in the box (except for recording external synths.)  I may go back to the TC sometime soon.
The Sonar Vocal Strip has a doubler and I use it as an effect, but it does not sound like real doubling to me. 

Thanks man.  I think I did some edits while you were writing

Very simple and useful method:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mvItX5-WEI

If i have subtle needs I will use the doubler in VX64.  If i need something with a little more bite but not as cheesy sounding, this method works well for me.

great piece.
i do alot of this as well only by using nudge and copy pasting other parts over other parts(like n the vid dub posted.)
i usualy alway live edit my double tracks though.
i dont like to use v vocal because i can just as easy fix the parts naturaly.
though i like your ideas on it,great work.

Konradh, thank you for the topic.  i can always use more tips since no method works in all situations.

Great tips, thanks for sharing.  It's always interesting to learn how different people approach various techniques like this. 

Matt, Thanks, but don't worry.  I do sort of know what I am doing.

Singing twice is my most common technique.

The first technique (copy, time shift, and re-correct) does not result in phase issues because the waveforms are edited differently in each instance of Melodyne and you essentially have two different performances.  Note that the overal pitch as well as the drift and variation are altered.  If you just copy the raw wav and move it in time, you can get some comb filtering.

Some people do not like doubling, but it served the Beatles well.  They managed to sound huge with just bass, drums, two guitars, and voices.

Lynn, Your technique is ideal for those who can do it.  Many singers I work with are very good at this natural doubling.  Others really struggle to get their cut-offs the same, and all the details right, but your way usually sounds the best (to me).

One thing: it sometimes depends on how hard the song is.  Singers tell me my songs are difficult.  They don't sound difficult, but something about the intervals and the way the words fit make them a bit harder to get consistent phrasing.

Thanks for joining in on this!  I will check out your music online.

Guitarhacker, good post.  You are right on (although I pesonally hand-correct everything because I am OCD!).  I agree about selecting takes: when I record lead vocals, I name the tracks Primary, Double 1, Double 2, etc. after evaluating them.  I won't use a track for doubling unless it is pretty good, but the Primary is the one with the best feel.    (Sometimes I call the double tracks ADT1, ADT2, even though they aren't automatic because that is shorter in the V-Studio display.  Everybody knows what it means.) I may have a track called Parts, meaning it is not good overall but has some really good phrases for comping together a take.
 
Regarding the "cheat" method, I use it to create big background voices.  Example:  Harmonies do the same thing in Chorus 1 and Chorus 2 so I record six parts or eight parts for each chorus (3 or 4 parts doubled).  Then I drag a copy of Chorus 1 to Chorus 2 and vice versa.  This is also cool when you have a big group of people singing unison and want to get a Pink Floyd "Brick in the Wall" sound.

For some reason, I had never thought of using this method for acoustic guitar until I saw the video.  That's pretty slick, too.

I'll record my vocalist's vocals as many times as I think is enough to comp together at least 3 'keepers'

Then, I'll select the 2 best ones, comp'ing if necessary, and then apply V-Vocal to all the keeper clips.

I'll adjust pitch, timing & formant (if necessary) separately for each clip, and I make sure I never correct to 100%.

All correction is done manually, and I'll always apply a slightly different correction on different clips. Not that every note needs correction of course! If it as that bad I'd get a different singer.

Then for a lush vocal, I'll pan the 2 somewhere between 20% & 40% L&R