Doubling Vocals
Doubling vocals makes them sound bigger and fuller in the mix. A vocal doubler plug-in creates two (or more) copies of the vocal, pans them to the left and right, then adds a slightly different delay to each copy and changes the copies’ pitches by a few cents. Doubling is a subtle effect, but it can really fill out a vocal and give it presence. Instead of running a dedicated vocal doubler, you can create a doubling effect in Ableton Live using the track delay, pan, and detune controls.
Start by duplicating the vocal track twice. I’m using this vocal sample from AnaFranco ( which you can download here):
Group the three tracks together to make them easier to work with, then rename them “Vox L,” “Vox C” and “Vox R.”
![Vocal Doubling](http://quadrophone.com/site/assets/files/1042/vocal-doubling-1.jpg)
Pan the “Vox L” track all the way to the left; pan “Vox R” all the way to the right. Enter two different numbers into the “Track Delay” controls underneath Vox L and Vox R. The larger the numbers, the wider the vocals will be (to keep the vocals from sounding separated, keep the track delays under 30 ms).
![Vocal Doubling](http://quadrophone.com/site/assets/files/1042/vocal-doubling-2.jpg)
Click on the vocal clip in the Vox L track to open its waveform display. Change its “Detune” control to 6. Click on the Vox R clip and change its detune to -6.
![Vocal Doubling](http://quadrophone.com/site/assets/files/1042/vocal-doubling-3.jpg)
Drag the volume sliders for the left and right vocal tracks all the way to the bottom. Start playing the vocal; as the three tracks play, drag the left and right volume sliders upward until they’re filling out the vocals without becoming obtrusive:
![Vocal Doubling](http://quadrophone.com/site/assets/files/1042/vocal-doubling-4.jpg)