Is it unusual to stack modulation effects like chorus/phasers/doublers?

[Dehaan]

I mean have a vocal track with two different types of doublers on it stacked in series. Usually I wouldnt do this but it sounds ok to me.

Is it very unusual (or amateurish) to stack modulated delay effects like chorus/phaser/flanger/doubler effects in series on the same vocal track? (Not in parallel - and I'm not talking about long delays like slaps or 1/8th notes)?

[muki]

but it sounds ok to me.

if it sounds ok, then it's ok

[glokraw]

Effects can move vocals or sections of them to a new environment
or a different mood to suit a song. Not every song needs that, but when you
yourself want to hear the results over and over, others probably will too.
Expand your horizons, don't use someone elses 2020 calendar

[lfm]

I hear a lot of that going on radio - covering up not prestine voice quality with loads of effects, not to mention autotune pitch quantizing which is like a pandemic in itself.

In some cases seem to be needed.

Some use playing an instrument same melody as sung, unison, for the same purpose. It takes attention away from the actual voice.

I hate my own voice, and just do demos for myself to create a song - but hire vocalists to really go serious if the song is worth it.
So use effects, doublers, Waves Ultrapitch and whatnot to stand it until song and lyrics are done.

[Kinh]

cant make heads or tails of wha-ya sayin' mate

[Tricky-Loops]

Every artist has his/her signature voice that needs to be recognized in a song and is treated with different stacked effects (and several tracks for the vocals, not only one), so I'll say it's usual. Phasers I wouldn't use too much for vocals but everything else - if it sounds good, it is good.

[Aloysius]

FX can be excellent on vocals.



If you make something good with it, people will be trying to get that Dehaan sound for as long as music is made.

[Aloysius]

[Tricky-Loops]

You might love or hate Moby (or everything in between like me) but this is an example of how to use effects on vocals creatively...

[sbj]

Rock 'n' Roll - Nobody tells you where to go

"R.E.M"

Be yourself - You can't be no one else

"Oasis"

Unusual is good if it fits and/or help the song. According to your own taste.

[jens]

I mean have a vocal track with two different types of doublers on it stacked in series. Usually I wouldnt do this but it sounds ok to me.

Is it very unusual (or amateurish) to stack modulated delay effects like chorus/phaser/flanger/doubler effects in series on the same vocal track? (Not in parallel - and I'm not talking about long delays like slaps or 1/8th notes)?

No, generally speaking it is neither amateurish nor unusual. It all depends on what and how
you do it in any specific case of course.

Let's consider just chorus first:

a chorus is a simple modulated delay line. It's like instead of just having one (say) violin play something, having a second one, third one, etc. playing the same exact thing, but not with the exact same timing - it's delayed, but the delay time is not stable - sometimes it's shorter, sometimes it's longer - the difference between the longest and the shortest delay time is the depth - and then there is the speed of this modulation of course. These three factors (delay time, depth, speed) all positively affect the severity of the effect with increasing values.
Every chorus effect will have a certain number of delay-lines. This is also called the number of voices (it's the number of violins) With some chorus effects you can set the number of voices between a certain minimum and maximum.
Adding voices will make the chorus thicker. But as with the added violin players, the more you have, the tighter the playing needs to be, or you are in danger of creating an progressively inarticulated wash of sound that may also begin to sound out of tune (that would seperate a good string ensemble from a bad one right there).
But with that in mind, and if you tweak it carefully, a (say) eight-voice chorus can be a great thing (basically in the same exact way a 100piece orchestra can be a great thing). And if you have a chorus plugin you otherwise like that has only four voices (or less) you may add instances of it in order to increase the number of voices. So there is nothing inherently wrong with that at all.

Then:

A flanger is basically a chorus with added feedback of the delay lines (but with a tendecy for shorter delay times than a chorus - but there's quite some overlap), so I do not see anything wrong with stacking chorus and flanger either.

A phaser is yet another thing - it seeks to do something similar to a flanger, but it uses (modulated) allpass-filters instead of delay-lines that creates cyclic phase-cancellations (as does a through-zero flanger). Again it might be a nice thing to add to a chorus or a flanger effect.

A "tremolo" modulates the gain (and/or pan) of the signal you send through it so it is a totally different thing altogether than chorus/flanger/phaser (it's like cyclic volume fluctuations so regardless of whether you have one vilion player or eighter violin players, that won't systematically affect what the tremolo does.

And so on and so forth... in short and to reiturate: no, generally speaking it is neither bad practice nor uncommon.

Waves' Kaleidoscopes plugin for instance has exactly that purpose - stacking two modulation effects:

https://www.waves.com/plugins/kaleidoscopes#image

[GRUMP]

Rock 'n' Roll - Nobody tells you where to go

[vurt]

add more till it doesn't sound good.
there's no limit, if you like it, it's right!

[Erisian]

"Whatever gets you thru the night, it's alright, alright."

[dark water]

Not unusual at all. If it sounds good, go for it

But caution might be needed with regards to how easily it is to fit an amazing stack-effected element within an overall mix.
Obviously, different mix contexts (or sections of mixes) can make this easier to fit in or not.
Try it out either way