How to create perfect and rich vocal harmony like a pro

Harmony is something where multiple vocals with different scales are layered together. You can listen rich vocal harmony in song "Tu Jaane Na" from Bollywood movie Ajab Prem Ki Gazab Kahani at starting part.

Now you can layer two or even ten vocals together and that totally depends upon your requirement.
For creating harmony you don't necessarily need more people. You can layer your own vocals multiple times. But to make it perfect, do the following :

1. Record your vocal multiple times with different scale

Some people use plugins such as Vox Doubler or even Chorus. I am not saying that they aren't good. But they can't give the output which you actually want and neither any pro engineer uses these plugins to create harmony.

2. Scales on which you need to record

Now if you are going to record simple harmony of two layers then you can first record it in original scale. And then you can record same melody by going down -2 semi notes but in same scale. So you are basically shifting your notes and not scale. Same rule will apply if you want to add more layers. You can shift your notes by -2, -4, -6, +2, +4 or +6 to create multiple layers.

Apart from scale now these days most of the singers are also layering vocals recorded in same scale but with different style. Means, they first record in base scale with original style. Then record same thing again but this time by adding more breath or singing in husky voice. You can hear it in many songs of Honey Singh & Badshah.

3. How to layer vocals

Song is made up of different sounds and it's all about frequencies. Every sound acquire some space in frequency spectrum. So the science lies here of which most of the newbies aren't aware. You cannot just simply mix/layer all your vocals and expect for some magic. For making it sound rich, you need to tweak their EQs. And that too depends upon how many layers you add. If there are two layers along with original vox then you have three voxs. Now you can allot them certain space in sound spectrum by EQing them. So low scaled layers can be assigned lower frequencies only. You can cut off their high frequencies. And for high scaled layers you can cut off their lower frequencies. For original vox you can cut off both low and high frequencies and just assign mid frequencies. In this way, no layer will overlap with another and your output will sound like a pro. After that you can slightly decrease the volume of all layers except your original vox in order to make original vox sound more powerful than others.

4. Things not to do

Newbies are very attracted towards Reverb/Delay effect & now these days Auto-Tune. They add it everywhere. My advice is to not overdo it. Only add it wherever necessary and that too in very little amount. In harmony, don't add reverb that has mountain kind of feel. Instead add reverb that sound like you are in a big room. So it will sound more open and big. But at last, you can overlook some rules and do it as per your requirement as long as you know what you are doing.