Vocals- Clone/Pan Opposite/Invert Phase technique?

hate duplicated cloned vox tracks.

much more, prefer to actually sing the vocals twice.

i lay these right on top of each other.

then for backups, i sing each part twice, and pan them the same.
works great for 3-part harmonies, so that would be 8 vocal tracks in all.

this is the way that Rundgren did a lot of his vox's, it's really old school, but to my ears, sounds so much better than cloned tracks that have digital tricks on them.

If you are panning the "parent" and cloned tracks hard L and R (and inverting the phase of the cloned track) ... yes, in mono you will have no vocal.  It is called the "Out Of Speakers Trick" and is explained on page 174 of Roey Izhaki's "Mixing Audio" and I quote from his book:

"The out of speaker trick is used as a special effect, a sonic gimmick, and is usually applied on the least important instruments, or ones that appear for a very short time in the mix."

Alternatively, you can apply the Haas trick discussed on page 169 of the same book.  Pan the two tracks hard left and right then nudge the cloned track so it is from 1 to 35 milliseconds delayed (do not invert the phase). 

Best option is to double track vocals.
 
EDIT: oops, change microseconds to milliseconds

Yeah not a fan of that technique. When you're starting out and first 'discover' it, it seems like the perfect amazing studio trick. But as you learn to understand these tricks better, you'll find you use them less and less. It may have it's place as referenced above from Roey Izhaki's book, but that's about it. In short, don't use it unless you really know what you're doing. Or willing to experiment.

Recording the vocal twice and panning hard right and left (as mentioned above also) provides a similar sound but without the same issues. Give that a go. Also recording vocals using the mid-side technique (abbreviated M/S) can give a similarish sort of feel again. But you may not have access to the mics available for this type of recording.


Highly recommend you check out Roey Izhaki's 'Mixing Audio' book. It's a great read and there is lots to learn from it from beginner up to advanced (though I see it as primarily a beginner to intermediate book). The section on compressors is particularly good.

You could just put the vocal track dead center than put in reverbs or delays that would travel in your desired width so that i could also be suitable in mono and not only stereo.

I don't like cloned tracks.

I prefer to record at least 3 "keeper" vocal tracks. Use the best one for the lead..... centered and up front. 

Pan the others and keep them low.... -18db to -24 db usually works well.  You get the hint of the vocal doubling in stereo but not overpowering. 

I have even used 5 tracks... one centered and two right and two left at different pannings.... a bit fatter but keep them low.

Be forewarned, I am not an expert … more of an obsessed hack … there are many others on this forum who you should probably be taking advice from … that said:

I put Voxengo’s Voxformer (a vocal strip containing EQ, Compression, gating, de-essing, etc.) on the vocal track in the effect’s bin and use that as a starting point to get the vocal to sit in the mix. 

Voxengo’s products are nice for many reasons and wrt Voxformer (a lot like Ozone) you can really use their presets as learning tools and possibly starting points for tweaking the various parameters (but please don’t tell anybody I said that, especially Bitflipper … it will just piss him off).

From there I experiment with reverb, delay and chorus either in the effects bin of the track itself or as a buss (probably just stating the obvious).

But, I did recently start fooling around with an old-school delay technique that I really like:

With the lead vocal right down the middle, I insert 2 sends on the mono vocal track and set up 2 stereo buss’s panning them hard left and right.  I then insert a mono tape delay (the tape delay in Line 6’s guitar pod) in the effects bin of each buss.  I set the delay panned hard left to a 1/4 note delay and the delay panned hard right to an 1/8 note delay (e.g., 429 microsecond and 214 microseconds respectively for a tune at 140 bpm) and very subtly bring them into the mix.  I am finding that it really creates a nice/interesting stereo image (if that’s the right term) for something panned down the middle.