Live Sound & Production

[Rob_H]

Morning,

Just wondering if any of you use harmonizers/pitch correctors at all and if you have any recomendations? Some of the people I work with are really not that great, just looking for ideas to make them sound better than they really are.

A couple I am looking at are the TC Harmony Helion and the Tascam TA-1VP; I have never used one of these but have had good luck with their other products...maybe there is something else out there you have used successfully?

Thanks,

Rob

[dcastar]

We tried the TC Voicelive2 Extreme....   talk about a pile of ish...   we had a bricked unit right out of the box.  Then their support line "couldnt help us" for a week since their "main people" were at the NAMM show.  When we got the 2nd unit, it had a bad fx cpu,  the 3rd unit, they sent to the wrong store.

Avoid like the plague.

We're now considering a more 'all-inclusive' type audio suite...   IE;   Waves MultiRack to handle all processing/fx/pitch/etc....

[Audiopile]

I have an Eventide H3000 harmonizer... pretty sweet unit.  I'll admit that generally when I'm lugging along the FX rack that has the H3000 in it, generally the vocalists on stage are "pretty good" at their craft, and I don't recall ever attempting to use the H3000 to jazz-up lame vocals.

[Dogoth]

Firstly, are you talking about harmonizers or pitch correction? Similar products but not exactly the same thing.

I've had people use vocal pedals to greater and lesser degrese of success. Mostly I've run into the TC brand and overall they seem to work (in the right hands (or is that feet :-)) pretty well for harmonies. As a monitor guy, I really dislike it when being sent a compressed or effected signal (I.E. Reverb or DDL). This can drasticaly limit GBF.

I think what you are asking about it pitch correction (I believe one of the features built in to the T.C. device). I have never used one live. I have seen others use the Anteries rack unit at FOH. Overall they seem to be very fussy about how you set them up or they start making "wrong notes". If this happens, you've just put a large blemish on the quality of the show. If dialed at a relaxed enough setting, they seem inneffective. Pitch fix is great for studio work (I've done this many times) but pretty horrible to use in a live context. If you set the box for a certain key, what if they sing an accidental? If you set the box to work chromaticly, what if they stray just a tiny bit more than that 1/4 step off? What happens to the natural vibrato or if the natural vibrato swings more than a 1/2 step? how can the box know the difference? Worst of all is if the band all tunes to a miscalibrated tuner :-). If you don't know the artist and their work intimatly, I wouldn't dream of recommending you using pitch correction live.

Get better talent ;-)

my .02

[agedhorse]

Generally, unless you work with the band regularly coming up with appropriate algorithms and the right approach it far too difficult to get really good results. Poor results is worse than not using one at all.

[abzurd]

I've used the following for multiple years each:

Digitect Vocalist Performer

TC-Helicon VoicePrism

TC-Helicon VoiceWorks

TC-Helicon VoiceWorks Plus

TC-Helicon Voiceplay (current "backup")

TC-Helicon VoiceLive2 (current primary)

The VL2 is the best of the bunch and used for EFX and harmonies. I'd never buy any of these types of units for live pitch correction (unless on purpose for effect like auto-tune). Often too, if you have pitch problems there's usually other issues that pitch correction can't help you with. Also, if doing anything with sliding notes (country, jazz, or really any good singer not just ploding their way throug the lyric) then you don't want pitch correction anyway as it will be noticeable.

As far as use, it's not going to make you better than you are. What it does in our case is mak me mulitple people and the non-singers stick to the gang vocal type songs. For tight pop harmonies and "making songs your own" by changing up timing or just doing songs differently on a whim, it's great. The harmonies track right along with whatever I'm doing. The key is "less is more". I use a few crazy effects here like auto tune and some chopper thing, but 90% of the time it's a bit of tap tempo delay and some compression with a single harmony vocal about 6 dB lower than the melody.

[Rob_H]

Appreciate the feedback,

I was more looking at the harmonizer aspect than the pitch one; the units I was looking at have both included which is why I had the slash...my thoughts were a mild amount of harmony may sweeten the sour but maybe that isn't the case.

[Tomm Williams]

Rob

Is it possible (or desirable) to do something much simpler like change the key of the song to something easier to sing?

[abzurd]

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Tomm Williams wrote:

Rob

Is it possible (or desirable) to do something much simpler like change the key of the song to something easier to sing?

---

That's a good call. I hear that a lot. Person trying to sing a song that's not in their wheel house. It sounds shouty and the voice gets worn down quickly which hurts subsequent tunes. We probably change the key of around 1/3 of our songs. The bass player is the only one that truly has to transpose. The keyboard player can do it with a patch and guitar player has a transpose pedal so sometimes he'll learn the song in the original key and just use the pedal.

[abzurd]

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Rob_H wrote:

Appreciate the feedback,

I was more looking at the harmonizer aspect than the pitch one; the units I was looking at have both included which is why I had the slash...my thoughts were a mild amount of harmony may sweeten the sour but maybe that isn't the case.

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You can't sweeten sour with more sour. If the root voice is off the harmony will be off too.

[Rob_H]

Those are good suggestions if it was my band...some of the bands I work with have egos so big they wouldn't listen to the lowly sound guy...lol...for the work I am talking about I only do sound, with some bands it is a fun night, with others I am watching the clock from 10:00 on...

[abzurd]

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dcastar wrote:

We tried the TC Voicelive2 Extreme....   talk about a pile of ish...   we had a bricked unit right out of the box.  Then their support line "couldnt help us" for a week since their "main people" were at the NAMM show.  When we got the 2nd unit, it had a bad fx cpu,  the 3rd unit, they sent to the wrong store.

Avoid like the plague.

We're now considering a more 'all-inclusive' type audio suite...   IE;   Waves MultiRack to handle all processing/fx/pitch/etc....

---

Just some bad luck I think. I don't know about the "extreme" edition, but the VL2 is a kick @$$ processor, especially if you're doing all the production yourself. It has one glaring problem that is easily correctable, but TC-Helicon refuses to fix though.

The most used foot switch, thenharmony switch, is between 2 other switches. This was a huge bonehead move as you're forced to look down EVERY time you hit the harmonies or risk tapping something else. The alternative is to hover your foot over the switch. This is uncomforatable and doesn't do much for the performance. OK, no problem, you can use an external pedal like a keyboard sustain switch. This allows you to tuck the harmonizer up close to the monitor so it's out of site and gives a great way to harmonies. EXCEPT, with a software release about a year ago they introduced a huge bug (in my book anyway) and forced the unit to "harmonies on" when you change patches. So you now have to remember to step on pedal to deactivate the harmonies or you end up starting the song with harmonies.

TC said the unit was working as intended and there were no plans to change it. So basically they force the thing to be a guitar/singer sitting on a stool box. I still use it with the pedal and probably 2 times a night forget to reset the harmonies to off..... sigh

[OneEng]

Hi Rob,

I have used pitch correction on my vocals and on guest singers (TC Helicon VoiceWorks).  The default settings seem to be pretty subtle.  I haven't had any time when it made my voice sound worse (at least when I recorded it).

Of course the best solution is to have a lead singer that gets notes perfect every time.  I wouldn't qualify for that myself, and I think that there aren't many who would.

What I do have is very good pitch.  If I am distracted, I can be slightly off on a note or two.  I find that the pitch corrector handles this quite well making the notes cleaner without coloring my vocal in any way I can hear.

Now if you take a seriuosly bad singer who isn't "slightly off" nor on just "a note or two now and again", the results might not be as good as what I have seen in my experience (even my guest singers are quite good so I wouldn't know how a really bad singer would effect the unit).

[Mutha Goose]

I have found one good use for my TC Electronics VoiceTone Harmony-G: It works pretty good for vocal training. I'm a guitar player, but I do sing backup. I found I had to learn to listen to my own voice. It just wasn't natural for me. It was far easier for me to hear the harmony relative to the music. By practicingwith  that, I was able to train my ear better.

But I wouldn't gig with it. It's noisy. And although this one wasn't one of their top line products, you really need to bury the harmonizer in the mix because they are chipmunky. Lastly, in order to use one of these correctly, you really should construct the harmonies for each song IMO.