Educate me on Vocal Harmonisers.

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Slowy
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Educate me on Vocal Harmonisers.

Post by Slowy »

I'm in a band of old codgers. The only highs we can produce is feedback.

So I suggest a vocal harmoniser, they think it's a brilliant idea and start quizzing me.

And I haven't got a clue. Just because I said, "vocal harmoniser" doesn't mean I know anything.

Anybody use them?
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Re: Educate me on Vocal Harmonisers.

Post by griff »

Following this one.

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Re: Educate me on Vocal Harmonisers.

Post by Jake »

I picked up a TC Helicon something or other from somebody on here and it’s great - my advice is jut use a single extra voice (eg a fifth) rather than crowding it with two extra voices

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Re: Educate me on Vocal Harmonisers.

Post by jimi »

After some terrible attempts at doing some Eagles harmonies, my band all pitched in and bought our singer one. Had a couple of goes but it’s landed in the too hard basket I think.

Sorry, not much help.

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Re: Educate me on Vocal Harmonisers.

Post by griff »

Vocal harmonist 'Petal'

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Re: Educate me on Vocal Harmonisers.

Post by slash-ed »

Here's a video I made for work a few months ago that (I think) showcases pretty well the tasteful use of a vocal pedal to enhance various aspects of a performance. The harmonies on this one work on the key that you input into the unit, which means you'd have to program it differently for each song.



However, newer units such as this next one, can operate on guitar input key recognition, so basically you tell it you want to stack a high and low harmony for example, and it'll sense from the chords you're playing what vocal harmony to produce. It's quite magical, really!

Be aware though, with this kind of unit, if you're not the singer, it'll probably end up falling to you to program and control the unit :lol: which, perhaps, is for the best anyway...

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Re: Educate me on Vocal Harmonisers.

Post by bobiron »

I use a TC Helicon XT Harmony, it has a number of presets you can fiddle with. It's good unit and has a nice preamp for the voice with some compression and eq, you do need to feed an instrument into it for the unit to track your key (essential). I don't use this in the context where there are people who can actually sing any harmony as rule and tend to use it to fill in choruses in a smaller context and is something I do like over using. These are a shit load of fun by yourself, but you do need reasonable pitching and breath control to get something that sounds good in the first place. On aside note, because I love the TC stuff, I have a TC Helicon Synth as well, which has the same preamp front end, but different synth and autotune effects. Its a load fun too, never played this out (yet). To get the best out of the autotune requires good voice control too of course, no easy answers there either. SH market price for an XT Harmony is around the $250 mark I believe.
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Re: Educate me on Vocal Harmonisers.

Post by Bollix »

Following this

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Re: Educate me on Vocal Harmonisers.

Post by Slowy »

slash-ed wrote:Here's a video I made for work a few months ago that (I think) showcases pretty well the tasteful use of a vocal pedal to enhance various aspects of a performance. The harmonies on this one work on the key that you input into the unit, which means you'd have to program it differently for each song.



However, newer units such as this next one, can operate on guitar input key recognition, so basically you tell it you want to stack a high and low harmony for example, and it'll sense from the chords you're playing what vocal harmony to produce. It's quite magical, really!

Be aware though, with this kind of unit, if you're not the singer, it'll probably end up falling to you to program and control the unit :lol: which, perhaps, is for the best anyway...

Thanks Ed. Fortunately, the singer plays guitar so that's a start. I think this has more options and complexity than we need; remember we're old. Is there anything that just plugs in and gives straight harmony?
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Re: Educate me on Vocal Harmonisers.

Post by slash-ed »

Slowy wrote: Thanks Ed. Fortunately, the singer plays guitar so that's a start. I think this has more options and complexity than we need; remember we're old. Is there anything that just plugs in and gives straight harmony?
Haha fair enough!

This is probably what you'd want for straightforward easy harmonies (from our range, anyway!):



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Re: Educate me on Vocal Harmonisers.

Post by Kris »

ive got a VE---20.Its fuckin great but the only use i have for the harmoniser is making bath plug type gurgles.

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Re: Educate me on Vocal Harmonisers.

Post by Lawrence »

hey Slowy
Ive got a Digitech vocalist live 4 sitting idle. PM if you're interested.
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Re: Educate me on Vocal Harmonisers.

Post by kwhelan »

I watched a digitech vocalist demo roadshow few years back and it was amazing. the guy they had do the demo really sold it. It had patches for specific band harmonies already loaded.you could just choose, eagles, beach boys , a full church gospel choir etc, did amazing male to female type patching, mind blown

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Re: Educate me on Vocal Harmonisers.

Post by Slowy »

Lawrence wrote:hey Slowy
Ive got a Digitech vocalist live 4 sitting idle. PM if you're interested.
Noted, thanks. I'm having dinner with the band tonight. Will discuss.
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Re: Educate me on Vocal Harmonisers.

Post by rickenbackerkid »

I'm going to sound like a Negative Nigel, but I'm not a fan. They can be used well and creatively (as in Ed's first video), but usually they aren't. It often just sounds like a random fake harmony that no one is actually singing.
My advice for un-singable high harmonies would be to sing the same notes an octave down.

We looked at one for our Springsteen band, to add some really high soprano-type lines, but it just sounded wrong, so instead we booked some extra vocal rehearsals to work out how we could sound full and good without the high voice.

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