If you can sing in tune,* doubling works really well to add depth and texture to an otherwise bland performance. (Doubling is simply the process of recording and re-recording unison parts of a voice or instrument.) If you ever thought your recorded voice felt "thin" in comparison to popular artists, this is probably why.

This can be done as an effect, a la Michael Franks and Thunderbolt Newman (see Youtube for examples), in which the technique is very obvious, or more organically. Countless artists as divergent as Art Garfunkel, Sting, Barbra Streisand, and many, many others record as many as dozens of doubled tracks using little more than the most basic of effects, e.g., compression and reverb. Crosby, Stills & Nash were known for "tripling"--each artist sang on each part--to add to their distinctive sound.

Some artists go much farther and play elaborate tricks with panning and various effects such as delay and pitch shifting, especially in octaves. But I recommend working on the the basic "non-effect" of simple multiple recordings of your voice and playing around with the mix. Try putting your strongest performance front and center, then putting other tracks so far back in the mix that you can just hear them, and go from there. I think you'll pleasantly surprise yourself.

HTH,

Richard

*If you can't, that needs to be dealt with first. It can be easily managed with a neat hack using a MIDI track of the desired part and a harmonizer/pitch shifter.

"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."