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On-stage vocal gear?

Thumper

Thumper

Supporting Member
Mar 22, 2000
5,272
10,994
74
Syracuse Ut
#1
Due to a failed/botched medical procedure, the best band I've ever been in is done. I now play with my former drummer and the lead player from the done band. I am an ok to mediocre vocalist, but am all we have. My range is limited and if I don't concentrate, I can go slighly flat. However hard the drummer trys to sing or harmonize, he is tone deaf.

I'd like to get a piece of gear to help create basic harmonies when needed without having to go to the mixing board. A little delay and reverb would also be good. A bonus would be something to help me sound in key, but I can get by without that feature.

We play the occasional party, but don't really want to play paid gigs so cost is something of an issue, but I can afford some decent gear.

I'm looking for some recommended gear from anyone who has been down this road.

Thanks in advance. PS: I trust you all more than that group over at Harmony Central (if in fact it still exists).
 
#2
I've run sound for bands that insist on using these and so far the best one has been by TC electronics, not sure of the model, etc, but it had verb and some other features, might be worth a look.

You have to feed it with a guitar signal to get the base for your harmonization so your guitarist would have to send you a split signal to achieve this...
 
#4
these gadgets are cool for deliberately "effected" vocals, like if you want to sound like a computer or cher or whatever. they will not help you make shaky vocals into better "regular" vocals.
 
#7
My singer has a TC Electronics VoiceLive 2 which sounds amazing to me. I'm going to get a VoiceTone Correct XT at some stage just to keep my backing vocals a little better in key and make my voice sound a little nicer, they look great.

Invalid Link Removed
 
#8
I use the TC Electronics as well. Mostly for xtra hormonies in my 60's duo. I also use it in my 5 peice pop band and it allows me to place a higher harmony aboove the female vocal on a lot of the chicky poo tunes we have to do. Pink etc. I high doubling is nice for some Pat Benatar stuff she does. I can sing the harmoiny below her and set it on high octave and it ads the harmony above. I haven't used the effects as we have FOH and he would be a bit upset but at rehearsal they sound fine. I think this is one for the OP. Under $300. Yes a guitar feed is helpful but I use it alot w/o one and it works as well. I use it so much that I have it mounted on my pedal board so all I have to do is run my mike into it and then to the snake.
 
#10
I did look at the Boss VE-20 on YouTube and agree with Munji & others, it didn't sound natural. I'll look into the TC Electronics next.

BTW, I can sing and may be being too hard on myself (as usual with us bass players). But I am not a 45 songs a night voice, I have to pick and choose what I can sing both vocally and as a bass player (I"m trying to avoid dumbing bass lines down just so I can sing). Really, I just want to sound better because we have no FOH and our 70's era PA has no effects, so I think anything would help.
 
#12
I've also started using a TC Helicon Harmony GXT. One of our two guitarists (usually the guy who plays rhythm the most) gives me a feed from the tuner output of his board to let it know what chords are being played and what to harmonise against. I also turn the effects off and use the effects on the FOH.

I've found that it shows promise but I've had to work quite hard at getting it to do what I want. I use it in a band that does fairly heavy rock covers (think Iron Maiden and the Foo Fighters rather than the Carpenters). The issues I've had to work through are as follows:

1) The output of the device is quite hot and works OK if your desk has decent gain controls (which our gig mixer thankfully does) but it can be very prone to feedback if using a less sophisticated desk - you only have to breath on the volume control on the PA amp in our rehearsal space to get it squealing like a pig. The only option is to turn down the gain on the pedal, in which case it doesn't track so well.

2) I do backing vocals, not lead, so very often the line I have to sing to get nice natural harmonies is either to double the lead vocal line (not always appropriate) or find a vocal line that sounds quite odd on it's own.

3) My particular unit started to produce some very weird sounds (even with the harmonies switched off), and was only cured by downloading new firmware.

4) The interface is very intuitive but be prepared to read the manual for a deeper dive - there are more doubling options, effects and preset locations available if you dive deeper

5) I've found that a neat feature is that when you run it in stereo and turn the harmony knob fully clockwise it puts the dry voice on the left channel and the harmonised vocals on the right. This means that you can feed two separate mixer channels to get separate EQ on the harmonised vocals.

6) The dynamic EQ and compression does a reasonable job of compensating for the fact that when playing bass at the same time your mic technique can suffer, but the gate that it has to stop background instruments triggering it can sometimes feel like it has a high threshold and you have to sing into it at a certain level for the gate to open - otherwise nothing comes out.

7) You can set it into manual mode so that it knows what key you're in, but works more effectively when it's fed from guitar (it won't work from a single note bassline, you have to let it know where the 3rd or minor 3rd is)...BUT...you have to make sure that your vocals are then synchronised perfectly with whatever the guitarist is playing. If your phrasing and the guitarists timing don't click exactly right you can get a few weird harmonies going on...plus, playing bass while singing AND paying attention to the finest detail of your guitarists chord change timing takes muti-tasking to a new level.

My conclusion is that it just about shows enough of a glimmer to persevere with, but it is a LOT harder work then I expected it to be. I still don't entirely trust it to do it's stuff effectively when playing live - more work needed first.
 
#13
Jools4001 said:
I've also started using a TC Helicon Harmony GXT. One of our two guitarists (usually the guy who plays rhythm the most) gives me a feed from the tuner output of his board to let it know what chords are being played and what to harmonise against. I also turn the effects off and use the effects on the FOH.

I've found that it shows promise but I've had to work quite hard at getting it to do what I want. I use it in a band that does fairly heavy rock covers (think Iron Maiden and the Foo Fighters rather than the Carpenters). The issues I've had to work through are as follows:

1) The output of the device is quite hot and works OK if your desk has decent gain controls (which our gig mixer thankfully does) but it can be very prone to feedback if using a less sophisticated desk - you only have to breath on the volume control on the PA amp in our rehearsal space to get it squealing like a pig. The only option is to turn down the gain on the pedal, in which case it doesn't track so well.

2) I do backing vocals, not lead, so very often the line I have to sing to get nice natural harmonies is either to double the lead vocal line (not always appropriate) or find a vocal line that sounds quite odd on it's own.

3) My particular unit started to produce some very weird sounds (even with the harmonies switched off), and was only cured by downloading new firmware.

4) The interface is very intuitive but be prepared to read the manual for a deeper dive - there are more doubling options, effects and preset locations available if you dive deeper

5) I've found that a neat feature is that when you run it in stereo and turn the harmony knob fully clockwise it puts the dry voice on the left channel and the harmonised vocals on the right. This means that you can feed two separate mixer channels to get separate EQ on the harmonised vocals.

6) The dynamic EQ and compression does a reasonable job of compensating for the fact that when playing bass at the same time your mic technique can suffer, but the gate that it has to stop background instruments triggering it can sometimes feel like it has a high threshold and you have to sing into it at a certain level for the gate to open - otherwise nothing comes out.

7) You can set it into manual mode so that it knows what key you're in, but works more effectively when it's fed from guitar (it won't work from a single note bassline, you have to let it know where the 3rd or minor 3rd is)...BUT...you have to make sure that your vocals are then synchronised perfectly with whatever the guitarist is playing. If your phrasing and the guitarists timing don't click exactly right you can get a few weird harmonies going on...plus, playing bass while singing AND paying attention to the finest detail of your guitarists chord change timing takes muti-tasking to a new level.

My conclusion is that it just about shows enough of a glimmer to persevere with, but it is a LOT harder work then I expected it to be. I still don't entirely trust it to do it's stuff effectively when playing live - more work needed first.
Click to expand...
Wow, great feedback, you pre-answered some of my questions! I assume these comments also apply to the Voicelive?
 
#14
Thumper said:
Wow, great feedback, you pre-answered some of my questions! I assume these comments also apply to the Voicelive?
Click to expand...

I guess so.

The Voice live is three times the price and lots more sophisticated. I would expect that it will sound better right off the bat since it has more harmony options (the GXT is just two voices), but I also expect that with extra sophistication there is a steeper learning curve to get the best out of it (and I've found the GXT learning curve steep enough).

On balance, the GXT is enough for my needs.

Oh, I forgot to say that the doubling and octave up/down work well (and all these work without needing any key or pitch info other than you voice). I'm lucky enough to have reasonably good intonation, but the pitch correction also works nicely with no 'Cher' artifacts and the harmony voices sound good to my ears. They have a slightly overprocessed glassy top end sheen to them, but I've found this can easily be EQ'd out if you do the sperate mixer channel trick.
 
#15
I use the VoiceLive 2 for fattening my harmonies (I'm not a lead singer). In one band that has a keyboard player, his MIDI signal is sent to the VoiceLive to analyze which chords are being played and structure my harmonies accordingly.

In another band with no keyboard and a revolving door of guitarists, I use it (sparingly) stand-alone. Just picking the right key in a particular setting is not enough, but each key does offer three different major and three different minor configurations. Therefore, I can usually choose the right configuration for that key on that particular song.

The unit can be used anywhere from ever so subtle to outrageously up front. Very flexible and loaded with a good number of factory presets to do some cool and out-there things.
 
#16
I was just on a bill last week with a band that used one of those harmonizer units.

I didn't ask them any questions about it so I don't know what brand it was or how they had it set up... but it sounded pretty good (i.e., reasonably natural albeit a bit "harsh"), and it tracked amazingly well.

It got pretty obvious they were getting "help" when you were hearing 4-part harmonies with only 2 people on mics... so you want to be sure you use something like that discreetly... or at least, have another band member or two on dead mics, "miming". But otherwise I don't see the harm.
 
#17
A guitarist in the band that I sometimes dep with got a bit sniffy when I was telling him that I'd just got one of these and was trying to work it into the set for my main band.

His view was that it's cheating for a vocalist to use one of these.

I just pointed to his pedalboard and said "so you won't want to be cheating by using any of that stuff tonight then?"

I doubt that there is a recording made anywhere in the world these days without Autotune and/or significant amounts of vocal effects processing. That's what Joe Public gets accustomed to and what audiences come to expect as the production standard that live bands have to reach, so I have no qualms about using whatever works.
 
#20
Yeah that was what I noticed with the band I saw using it. The two singers in the band were both really good (the female one actually being spectacular), so I'm sure that helped. There wasn't really that "AutoTune" sound to the harmonies at all... just more vocal parts coming out of the P.A. than there were singers.

BTW another way to "cheat" is if you have a sound guy that can sing. I know of more than one band who has given their sound guy a mic and had him do backing vox from the board.
 

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