recording gang vocals

[tcg47]

So I record my music on GarageBand with a Macbook (I don't have access to a studio, at least not for now).

Any suggestions on recording gang vocals? Would it be possible to do an overlay with only my voice, or should I get more people involved (hence gang)?

Thanks

[splitsecond]

One way to do it is to record multiple tracks of your own voice, at different angles and distances from the mic. Make sure you mute the other vocal tracks when you do each one so that you arent "singing along" with them. 8-10 of those and you should be able to create a decent sound.

[bassdrummer2333]

I usually get 5 of my friends and we do it all together, of course those are more singing parts like a group, are we talking Underminded/Chasing Victory gang vocals or group singing?

[tcg47]

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I mean to get sounds like that. I guess more group singing, but definitely something like that. Or maybe listen to A Rocket to the Moon's "Dakota." I'm hard up for examples, but thanks for the advice

[andrew4045]

record in a small bathroom for a good effect

[Tristan Needler]

Whenever I've done it, it's been with three to five people standing two to three feet from the mic. If you're not recording in an echo-y space, be liberal with your reverb. Layer two or three of these, depending on how many people are in your group. Try playing with the panning on them too; that can make things sound "bigger."

From what I usually hear, I'd suggest cutting most of the lower bass frequencies out too.

I also think it's usually a good idea to have one clear voice over top of them, but mix it lower so it sort of blends. I think it helps to make things intelligible.

[remoteCONTROL]

The way we did it with dan and alan from four year strong on one of our songs was we had 5 of us about 4 feet from the mic, recorded 3 takes of normal singing, 1 with us doing it all an octave lower, 1 doing it an octave higher (falsetto), 1 really long and drawn out, and 2 screaming/yelling. I think we panned 2 tracks to the right, 2 to the left, and 2 down the middle. If you YouTube "cavalier recording four year strong" you'll find us tracking this. You can hear the finish product at myspace.co
/cavalier during the bridge of "do me a favor"

[HomeAgainDave]

Well when we did it on our first EP, our engineer (who was a moron and was high on pills the whole time not knowing a damn thing about gang vocals) had 5 of us just stand at a mic and record it 3 times, it sounded poopy. When we recorded our new stuff what our new producer told us was to have 3-4 + of you stand in a room (we were about 10 feet away from the mic) and have everyone singing in different directions. One was at one wall, the other was at another, i sang towards the ceiling but none actually singing towards the mic. When we layered that about 4-5 times it came out real nice and you could not pick out anyone in particular's voice in the recording it just sounded like a big group of people. so i would do that if thats what you're lookin for!