Me, my wife's husband and myself

1) Vocal exercises (to reach those octaves) ... this is by far the least cheezy, IMHO. In 20 minutes of vocal warm-up you might be able to accomplish Alto, Tenor, and Bass (with varying dynamics of course). Kevin Kayehl has done this with a hymn or 2; he sounds astonishing to my ears.
-- Who needs the barbershop quartet?

2) VSTs have been written specifically to give "identical voices", they have limited trial versions, but they sound a bit cheezy, IMHO. You can google them, no doubt.

3) Panning each vox as a double sounds great: possibly 50% to 100%. You are unlimited with panning (no rules), IMHO. SpaceDuck has demonstrated wide vox panning for a 'singular voice' ... in his piece MagicShow. He keeps his falsettos more medially panned. His wide-chorus effect is aimed at dramatization of the vox (filling your head, etc.).

-- Of course '4 persons' might be 'hard-panned' to separate them with little chorus ... but each 'person' needs some chorus effects (multiple takes, EQ changes, and pre-delays (while avoiding reverb mush).

4) Your signal chain seems more-than-adequate.

5) You will need to do 10-12 takes of Alto, Tenor and Bass.

6) I suppose you might need extensive manual compression (volume envelopes) to sweetly perfect your constructs.

philip wtf you talkin bout?

There are so many different ways to approach this. I'm assuming the question was more along the lines of "How can I do this with the tools I have available?" and not so much "What can I go out and buy that will help me acheive my goals?".

You hit the nail on the head when you mentioned EQ and panning. I think EQ especially is going to be your best friend here. The problem with singing all the parts yourself is that no matter what you do (unless you're really good at disguising your voice) all the parts are going to have a simialar tonal characteristic. When you start layering thos parts the frequencies will start to build-up making it sound unnatural and possibly harsh. So you need to EQ each track differently so they all sit together. Using different mics and signal chains helps a lot but if you don't have that luxury try singing in different rooms or different distances from the mic. Reverb treatments can help to push some of the tracks more in the background and some more up front (just like a real choir).

Antares makes some tools that allow you to change the gender and throat modelling. They work really well actually. Used in the right way, you can get excellent results Have fun!

Francesco, On a song I just finished I got a pretty cool chorus of voices by recording the same part on the same track 4 times. Then it was just a matter of blending the volume of the tracks together. It came out so lush, that I didn't find reverb or chorus effects necessary. You can hear it on my soundclick page below. Its called "Run". Pay attention to the second part of the chorus as that part features the higher harmony parts, more so than the first part.

Randy

I get my wife to join in too. If I give her a little gentle coaching she can do a pretty good job if the part is in her range. If its not there is always v-vocal. Anyway back to the point on 2 of the songs I've done recently is get her to record several takes of the part. Once she gets a good take I keep it and have her sing along with it. After a time or two she gets very consistent and I keep the best 3 or 4.

Then I do the same thing to harmony parts that I sing. then for each part I use either v-vocal or audio snap to tighten up the timing..but not too much. Then I pan each take a little different for each part and set levels for each take within each part. Once each part blending nicely then I work on blending them together. Now I have waht sounds like 12-16 singers standing in a group.

Another thing to try is Put some of the seperate takes through v-vocal not to correct the pitch but to slightly modify the formant. That will give each take a little different voice.

Most of all have fun and try different things till you find something you like.

ORIGINAL: Mamabear

There are few things a woman loves as much as the sound of her own voice

No abuse from me, but I sure wish it were true in my case! Maybe some day! I need more than just Melodyne.

Glad it worked for you though!

Whew! Thanks for letting me skate on that one, Janet. My girl isn't the greatest singer, but since I'm only a home amateur anyway, it's worth sacrificing a little quality in order to get her involved. And she has a blast doing it (when she stops cleaning long enough to sing for me)

Excellent idea;

I got the 10y/o kid on one song but should have vocal coached him more ... as V-vocal could not correct the register-cracks. Maybe I can get a little more composing done by using them more.

Amazing how 10-15 minutes vocal coaching clears my family's voxes, transforming their voices from cr&p to angelic chime, almost.

these are all very good techniques.............I am going to have to try some of them my self...............

Cliff