Apart from using another's voice, if you have reasonable technique, you can get a few different sounds yourself. Varying breath, twang and chest voice vs falsetto (I hope those are the right words in English) can make a big difference. You can really exaggerate especially if you blend a couple together.

Forgot to mention...the Formant tool in either V-Vocal or Melodyne Editor can give a different timbre to the second voice. This is an effective way to help differentiate from the main voice.

mike_mccue
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/w...omatic_double_tracking
 
 
edit to add; I see Craig beat me to the answer while I got distracting by listening to John Lennon songs.
 
:-)

I believe if i am not mistaken it was John Lennon who first thought up the practice of vocal doubling because he did not like the screechy quality of his raw voice. :)
 
I think it was Les Paul who originally thought up multi-tracking vocals, he experimented with multi-tracking vocals on his wife Mary Ford... 
 
Please correct me if i am wrong. :)
 
Do you compress the main vocal with the vocal double or do you compress them separately or both? Would it not be better to sing three unison vocals instead of just two? With V-vocal I can make the secondary vocals nearly perfectly line up with ease. But I am still not happy with the effect, i was panning them far left and right and that was probably what was wrong. I was cutting out the bass on the secondary vocals but not some of the highs thanks for the tip I will try that. :) 
 
With three vocals they could be panned slightly left right and center? I do not really like the doubling effect with most effects processors because of the phase cancellation problems, it sounds hollow. 
 
I heard that a vocal double needs to have different harmonics than the main vocal or they will phase and cancel out each other. This is why I would opt not to use melodyne on such a task, perhaps I am wrong. This is the same reason why I would opt to sing my own harmonies. In my opinion, Formant can only be stretched so a far.
 
I am going now to study the links you have posted thanks!

Anderton
Forgot to mention...the Formant tool in either V-Vocal or Melodyne Editor can give a different timbre to the second voice. This is an effective way to help differentiate from the main voice.

I like your song "Tell Me Why I Shouldn't", excellent gothic lyrics and tune. Your vocal style reminds me of Ric Ocasek of "The Cars", I hear definite new wave overtones, brings me back to many fond memories of me wearing The Cars vinyl albums down for sure. :)
 
I still have over 2000 vinyl from my rock days... 

mike_mccue
FWIW,
 I did not look for evidence of timing issues until listening to the timing issues started driving me crazy.
 
I use pitch correction tools to fix stuff that is off by a few "cents" in an effort to make the "mix" sound "glued". That's what I am looking for in pitch correction tool.
 
 It seems to me that Melodyne has gotten less satisfactory at doing that basic task as it has expanded it's capabilities....

 

mike_mccue 
 I have further frustrations with Melodyne Editor and its Melodic Algorithm's implementation of Pitch Drift Correction, but I see that there is an embedded idea that people that make these observations are assumed to be incapable or unwilling to learn how to make use of all the functionality available.
 
 The melodic pitch drift correction functionality has become quirky, the hand edit pitch drift tools do not provide an effective sounding solution, and the over all sound of the correction/drift melodic algorithm processes sound dead and lifeless compared to the results you can obtain with the older Melodyne Plugin math....

 
Very interesting assessments, Mike. Although many would say that the time shift you refer to would be imperceptible, I can't help but wonder if it nonetheless has an effect on the "feel" of the track, something alluded to by both you and RexRed.
 
So with this timing issue in Melodyne, how do you deal with it? Manually sliding the rack? Do you find yourself using V-Vocal more than Melodyne?

Hi Ruben,
 In most cases I time align with Audio Snap or Elastic Audio warping after tuning.
 
On the recent project that got me focused on the issue, we elected to not use any MBT grid and have chosen to work with timing simply by being very discriminating about what we chose for the final takes/comp. The project is based on the groove laid down by the bass player and the conga player.
 
Having scrutinized the timing as we were laying down the parts it became obvious that something weird was going on when the results of tuning produced unfamiliar sounding timing.
 

mike_mccue
Use someone else's voice.

 
Oh I could tell you a few stories about that... But I have to protect the innocent :).

mike_mccue
Hi Ruben,
 In most cases I time align with Audio Snap or Elastic Audio warping after tuning.
 
On the recent project that got me focused on the issue, we elected to not use any MBT grid and have chosen to work with timing simply by being very discriminating about what we chose for the final takes/comp. The project is based on the groove laid down by the bass player and the conga player.
 
Having scrutinized the timing as we were laying down the parts it became obvious that something weird was going on when the results of tuning produced unfamiliar sounding timing.
 

Anyone use the audio transients tools to align timing?. That with quantize is great for live instruments tracks, I use it a lot. It is (i think) a native Cakewalk feature so hopefully it will not be going away soon. I never use it for vocals because it once added a doubling effect to a vocal so I steer clear from that. That particular vocal I did not have a back-up for. Chalk it up to lost performances. The audio transients tool I have found is great to shore up acoustic guitar chords and electric guitar leads to the beat, does not add any noticeable artifacts after the render that I have found. I think it has been improved and it is a great reliable tool set now.. 

I had good results with V-Vocal but I use Melodyne exclusively now.  I find that Melodyne is better for pitch and timing correction and it automatically adjusts formants well.  However, if I need to change formants manually, V-Vocal seems to sound better.  In other words, if I let Melodyne default the formants it sounds good; but if I need to adjust formants manually with Melodyne, I am usually not happy.
 
I also liked V-Vocal's vibrato tool.
 
The thing that tipped me over to Melodyne is that I find the interface easier to use and it is easier for me to visualize pitch and timing in musical terms.
 
Melodyne definitely has a more modern look than the V-Vocal Tomorrowland space ship display.  (Not that the GUI is that big a deal--just saying.)
 
 

Craig, Your cover is great.  It's much ballsier than the Animals version and has better vocals.  I also liked your chord changes on the chorus better.  (I am not slamming the Animals who were awesome, but we have moved on quite a ways since they cut their version.)