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Tc Helicon Vst Harmony 4: The Power of Virtual Voices



In music, the combination of multiple notes playing simultaneously is called harmony. The simplest example of harmony is a chord, where you have the root note being accompanied by other notes on a given scale to make it more exciting.




Tc Helicon Vst Harmony 4




Waves is well-known for producing high-quality plugins and audio software, which come in a variety of versions and choices to suit a wide range of applications. However, any plugin that may improve the sound aspects or make the workflow easier is appreciated, and Waves Harmony is just like that. This useful voice harmony generator has a simple and beautiful UI with clear controls that are entertaining to experiment with in the recording studio or on stage.


The Harmony Engine is dubbed as a cutting edge amongst other audio tools as it utilizes automatic and physical control settings. However, it is the ease and convenience that stems from creating multiple harmonies with only one vocal file that gives the harmony engine its place on this list as one of the best audio plugins in the market today.


With four distinct harmony voices, multiple flexibility controls, and vocal multipliers, Harmony Engine spared no effort in ensuring its users that it has the best tools to produce any song of their choice.


Harmony4 TDM brings TC-Helicon's intelligent harmony voices to any Digidesign ProTools HD equipped audio production environment. You can use Harmony4 to: - Create complete harmony parts from one voice- Augment existing background vocal tracks- Save time with instant vocal double tracking - Create guide tracks for studio singers


Photo: Mike CameronAlongside common dynamic and EQ processes available within the Voice Pro are more unusual and creative effects. The Transducer options (top) allow you to put the vocal through simulated electronic devices such as telephones or valve amps, while the Growl page (bottom) can make the voice rougher, grainier, and more 'rock & roll'.Photo: Mike CameronThe largest number of the Voice Pro's 250 factory presets focus on automatic double-tracking and harmony generation. For double-tracking, under the Harmony block's Humanise page, the user can control the degree of pitch and timing tightness to the original dry vocal. In addition, the style and degree of both vibrato and scoop (the 'scoop' that most singers apply at the starts of notes as they slide into the required pitch) to be added to the double-tracked vocal can be adjusted. As suggested by a range of the preset names (for example, Subtle Double, Thicken, Loose Double, Octave Double), almost any combination of super-tight through to downright sloppy double-tracking can be created.


In Chord mode, the harmonies are created intelligently from chords received via the MIDI In (most easily done via a sequencer, although you could play them in live). This tends to produce slightly less pitch variation within the harmony voices, and would certainly suit some kinds of material better than Scale mode. For total control over the harmony construction, Notes mode uses the pitch of MIDI notes to define the harmonies. Harmonies are only generated when notes are being played, and this can work very well if you only require certain words within a vocal line to be harmonised.


This block diagram shows how all the available processing modules within the TC Voice Pro are arranged to deal with the dry lead vocal, the processed lead vocal, and up to four automatically-generated harmony vocals. The Aux input bypasses all the vocal-specific processing, but still gives access to the µMod, Delay, and Reverb effect blocks.Photo: Mike CameronThe Inflection settings allow the pitch, timing, and level of a voice to be adjusted, and this includes the scooped pitch inflections most singers generate at the start of a note. Obviously, changing these settings is one way in which harmony voices can be modified to sound less like the original part upon which they are based, but they can also change the performance character of a lead vocal. Again, more extreme settings enter special-effects territory and there are even several Inflection presets that create an instant 'bad singer' vibe! The Vibrato settings do pretty much what you might expect, and the results can be very realistic indeed, generating a completely different vibrato character.


Personally, the excellent automatic doubling-tracking and harmony generation are the Voice Pro's main asset. I haven't had the opportunity to hear the Voice Pro alongside TC-Helicon's own Voice Works (a considerably cheaper unit dedicated to just these tasks), but the results that can be obtained with the Voice Pro surpass those of any other product I'm currently aware of, including my own (aging) Digitech Vocalist and the more recent Duo and Choir plug-ins within Avox. The ability to experiment with harmony generation in this way opens up all sorts of creative possibilities and would enable producers to experiment with harmony vocals in a way that would leave a group of session singers both very tired and writing out a big session bill.


The main sticking point for many potential users is likely to be the serious UK price. Whether this is worth paying will depend on whether the easy double-tracking, harmony generation, and vocal character alteration appeal, and whether you're going to find it convenient having pitch-correction and multi-effect processing in the same box.


The Zoom V3 is a vocal processor packing 16 studio-grade FXs, a 3-part harmony, a compressor, delay, reverb, and a chromatic pitch correction. Moreover, it works as an audio interface when you plug it into your computer with a USB cable.


The guitar port has a room-sense fiction to detect the music key and correct it along the way. Then, the mic input has a Pitch Correction setting plus a Sennheiser high-quality preamp. As for vocal effects, it offers reverb, delay, harmony, hard tune, and doubling.


The included effects are; double, reverb, echo, pitch correction, harmony, anti-feedback, and more! It lets you add dynamic intensity to your microphone, has a 4-in/8-out USB interface that helps with recording and on stage, and a complete library of presets!


Any vocal processor should include an option for adding harmony to your vocals. Certain processors can apply real-time chord recognition to the chords you're playing to produce vocal harmonies. As it uses the chord notes to produce harmonies for your melodies, the output sounds fantastic. It is crucial to keep this feature in mind if you play an instrument while you sing.


The switch in the middle lets you choose between a harmony below, above, or having both at the same time. The Latch button moves the footswitch from Latch mode to Momentary mode, the second of which lets you harmonize momentarily (like the length of the chorus) by holding the switch down. When you let it up the effect turns off.


You get quite the number of harmony options here, totaling 24 comprised of 12 up and 12 down variations of single and double voice harmonies. You select these using the Type knob that provides you with a visual confirmation of what is selected by lighting up easy-to-see red LEDs.


Besides the one and two extra voices of harmony set at a 3rd, 5th, or octave (all above or below) plus a neat "bass interval" that follows the root note of your instrument, you get a lot of other built-in effects such as an array of reverbs, a delay, a vocal doubling effect, and some modulation. It even has a built-in tuner for your guitar.


The guitarist or bassist can get so much mileage out of the Boss PS-6 Harmonist stompbox. It comes packed with four modes including Harmony, Pitch Shifter, Detune, and Super Bend. You can build up to a three voice harmony while syncing into the correct key thanks to the Key selector knob.


Housed in the classic Boss casing that's nearly indestructible, this bad boy packs in quite the number of options. The Balance knob controls your mix levels between the dry and wet signals but also acts as a rise time controller when in S-Bend mode. The Shift knob controls your pitch shifting intervals but at the extremes turns into a voice harmony selector.


The Key knob has all of the keys laid out chromatically for easy switching between songs, and also acts as a fall time controller in S-Bend mode. Note the Mode knob, which has you choose between major and minor for the harmony keys, and otherwise has the three other modes ready for selection.


Harmony is a type of pitch shifting and comes very close to the front of the signal chain, only after compression and equalization, essentially. You want to shape your waveform before duplicating it for harmony so you get the cleanest and clearest version being duplicated.


Quintet ($595 MSRP) can be used for live performances or in thestudio to create four-part intelligent harmonies. In addition toharmony, Quintet includes built-in lead voice double-tracking,TC-quality reverb and a high-quality mic preamp. 2ff7e9595c


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