TC Helicon Harmony-g

[Chaddycakes]

I've been loving this medium sized, cable eating box. It makes background vocals sound much more dynamic and it can take a hit (I dropped it off a table the other day and it was just fine). Lets talk about our presets, our effects, our settings, and our hopes and dreams...

I like five presets:

1)
A. Doubler engaged
No harmony
Room reverb

B. dbl disengaged
high harm
Room verb

2)
A. Doubler engaged
No harmony
Room reverb

B. dbl disengaged
high, higher harm
Room verb

3)
A. Doubler engaged
No harmony
Room reverb

B. dbl disengaged
low, lower harm
Room verb

4)
A. Doubler engaged
No harmony
Room reverb

B. dbl disengaged
High, Bass harm
Room verb

5)
A. Doubler engaged
No harmony
Combi #1

B. dbl disengaged
Octave down
Sfx #1


I don't think this instrument/effect is best suited to lead vocalist but rather boosting a backing vocalists abilities. Notice that all presets have a doubler in slot A. To state the obvious, you have to be able to jump in and out of these harmonies. But if you don't have the effect engaged it sounds a bit obvious when you kick into it.

I also have some special effects in slot five. The octave down with chorus works nice for a dark devil, but I tried
to put an octave up with it, and it drove the circuit.

Let's hear a pedal dance!

[avvie]

I'm using their highly oversimplified Voicetone H1. It's very new to me so I don't have much experience with it, but its first big trick was to allow me to do all the "ooh" harmonies in Awolnation's "Sail". The band wet their pants. Last gig I used it to sing part of the harmonica intro to "Train Train" :-D

[avvie]

I will say that it sounds electronic and processed no matter what you do but I try to keep the mix dried up as much as possible so that it's thickening rather than screaming HARMONY PEDAL ENGAGED!!!!

[Chaddycakes]

Originally Posted by avvie

I will say that it sounds electronic and processed no matter what you do but I try to keep the mix dried up as much as possible so that it's thickening rather than screaming HARMONY PEDAL ENGAGED!!!!

I never use this tool when I sing lead. Even the doubler is more of a way for a backup singer to thicken up a chorus without it being too obvious that he is doing so. I find that in a live setting people are more impressed by the fact that three people are capable of sounding almost like a record.

It is a strong spice to say the least. Maybe one day we'll have robots with big boobs singing perfect background harmonies for us all.

[Chaddycakes]

I was looking at what the H1 is capable of. It looks very good! The trick is being able to know which songs need guitar sensing mode (which is 75%) of them, and then the rest of them you need to know which key you want your harmonies to ring out in. For example, say your song is a funky G dominant groove that has no guitar chords per se, you pick C on the knob, and you rock out.

I kinda wish I had two Voicetone singles instead of this expensive Harmony-g. It'd be simpler in the end for what I want to do.

[Chaddycakes]

The H1 is better for bass players who are using the guitar player to trigger harmonies because they can get hands on control of what the harmony-g calls "manual mode". The only way to trigger the type of harmonies that the H1 naturally delivers in it's keyed modes is to have the guitar player trigger the proper chord at the right moment, which isn't ideal when the bassist is the one controlling the pedal/singing. I haven't rigged it up yet, but my boss tu-2 has a bypass out and if I get a passive ab box (such as the dod 270), I can trigger those chords myself with a couple of stomps. But, again it would be simpler to just turn the knob to the right key.