You could try the old method of just duplicating the track (4 or 8 times, or as many times as you like) and offsetting each one just slightly, you can also play with moving the pitch around on the duplicated tracks. Apply a verb with a fair amount of pre-delay and very little decay, and you should be pretty close.

Hey Steve, thanks.
Yes, man, I do duplicate ... but only say two or 3, as I am fairly new and get scared by using too many tracks, and esp as I think navigating on the project window in Cubase is really a bad experience (One of them gets minimized when I go to Mixer, so I have to maximize again to see the scroll bar). Isn't there a way to stack the recorded clips and duplicates on each other on the same track and position to minimize the number of tracks?

Well there is but there isn't. What some of us do is to create that crowd track as a separate entity production of its own. However many tracks it requires. And then you mix that down to a 2 or three channel mix of those to import into your current multitrack music production so as to minimize the amount of tracks you have to work with. It's simple math.

I did similar things back in the days of analog tape and I had no synchronization capabilities other than my index finger. That ain't listening to it in stereo to make sure the stereo image wasn't leaning to the left or to the right. And so if it would lean one way, I would drag a finger on the reel of one machine. If that started leaning to the right? I would drag my finger on the reel of the other machine. This same technique was utilized many years earlier for an effect called flanging. Because you had to drag your finger on the flange of the reels of tape between two machines. And it was a heck of a lot harder if you are working with older machines that did not feature constant tension a.k.a. torque control of the reeling motors. Because that would make the tape drift much more easily. And DC servo controlled capstan motors without flywheels. Although ya can still do it with the AC motors as it was done years earlier. And you can apply the same techniques and then some today in software as Steve described.

I mean there was the day ya know when we didn't have drum machines and we needed clap tracks. Or severally layered vocal harmony tracks... all that stuff. We would create a rough mix of music tracks that we had to a single track of a two track machine. We would then load up a fresh multitrack reel of tape and transfer that " Lay Up ", singletrack from the two track machine to an empty track on the multitrack fresh reel of tape. And then we would start cutting all of our layered overdubs.

When completed, we would mix down those layered tracks, as a singletrack to the two track machine. With that original rough mix rhythm track to the other channel of the two track machine.

Then we would load up our original multitrack music track tape and with the drummer counting song in, you would mash the play button on the two track machine (having learned its transport ballistics) to lay in, on-the-fly, to a single empty track on that multitrack music tape master reel. And I repeated that process over and over again until I had well over 30 bounced tracks on the 8-track master tape.

Then I had to go into essentially the same thing all over again just for the vocal tracks. And I was given a directive during the original production of tracking, recording and mixing that none of this will ever be released in stereo. But after the sales force heard what I had done, they wanted stereo versions to present to prospective clients. So I had to go back a few steps and basically repeat the whole process all over again in different ways. And everybody loved the stereo tracks even though at that point they were largely six or more analog generations down. And you know that means a lot of noise and hiss. Not my stuff. No way. And there were no computers. There was no noise reduction utilized that said noise reduction on the box. And whatever noise you might hear is a soft flowing creek of pink noise way off in the background. And no open spaces within the music to ever hear that. You only heard that on the drum count in, which was edited off with leader tape. And you've got it so much easier. It will only take you minutes that which took me hours and hours to do. And over and over again for each 60 second jingle of which I recorded a slew of every couple of months for a year and a half. And these were union jobs where you had six musicians to do six jingles at 3 to 4 passes each, alternate takes, all within three hours time. So you were recording while also mixing and bouncing mixing and bouncing while recording and recording other things while mixing and bouncing. Enough to give you airsickness. It required preemptive telepathic mixing skills. Because these weren't covers and you had no idea what these things in the end we're supposed to sound like? You just knew ya had to make all of your decisions as you went. And not at the end as we so commonly due to day. And it still had the sound like a contemporary hit record even though it was only a jingle which we called " 60 second musics ". Because they weren't jingles.

You've got to get down and dirty to do this stuff.
Mx. Remy Ann David

Thanks a lot, Remy, very informative, and we often ignore what brought us this far in tech. It's a whole wide world of things.

OK ... I know i could start a new thread, but I thought to just use the chance to ask here...

I thought 'Pitch Correct' is the best used to tweak voices but I wasn't very impressed..maybe i didn't do enough. Just wondering if there are any plugins for real wide scope vocal tweaking latitude? For example how do I achieve this kind of Timbaland(rapper) voice as in the opening (00:10) of this...
[MEDIA=soundcloud]dredaybeats/sporadical-j-lion-ft-jay-live

Thanks!

Crye, post: 401373 wrote: Thanks a lot, Remy, very informative, and we often ignore what brought us this far in tech. It's a whole wide world of things.

OK ... I know i could start a new thread, but I thought to just use the chance to ask here...

I thought 'Pitch Correct' is the best used to tweak voices but I wasn't very impressed..maybe i didn't do enough. Just wondering if there are any plugins for real wide scope vocal tweaking latitude? For example how do I achieve this kind of Timbaland(rapper) voice as in the opening (00:10) of this...
[MEDIA=soundcloud]dredaybeats/sporadical-j-lion-ft-jay-live

Thanks!

You've got several different processors running on that rap vocal track.

The first is done with EQ... and the EQ setting you want to use is referred to as "futzing", also known as a "phone" effect, and this is done with EQ....where you roll off all the low frequencies around 500hz and roll off high frequencies at around 5k. The you add a boost of around +3db at 800hz to 4k or so, these roll off/corner frequencies will vary from vocalist to vocalist so your mileage may vary.
The resultant sound will be very much like you would hear on an older phone.

The second thing I'm hearing is distortion - a controlled distortion, which you could get through a guitar amp sim plug like Amplitube. You can add varying amounts of distortion to rough it up to your taste.

The third thing is delay. There's a delay of about 700 ms or so on the track.... that's just a guess.... with a regeneration (how many echos there are) of about 40 percent.... again, just a guess off the top of my head.

I'm not hearing any auto tune or pitch correct of any consequence on the vocal, ( I didn't listen to the whole track), it's more of what I've described above. But there may be some here and there, I'm just not hearing it.
Now... there may be some pitch shifting, lowering the pitch of the original vocal track. I can't say for sure, this might just be the guy's natural rap voice with all the effects added as I've mentioned above.

Off the cuff, I'd say there is probably also some compression, I can't really accurately guess because the track sounds fairly squeezed to begin with because of the EQ, but my guess would be probably 3:1 with a threshold of around -10db... again... merely a guess.

fwiw
-d.

Donny -- Very clear and well structured! Thanks, i already feel myself doing it. Now, to work I go trying.