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TC Helicon Harmony Singer

Bredian

Bredian

Apr 22, 2011
916
158
unlicensedtherapyband.com
#1
Bought and rather than A/B it, took it straight to a gig last Saturday night.

Liked the "tone" button, but that's not the official reason I bought.

Looking to add a voice to harmonies, as I am the primary backup singer now, new drummer is capable, but 3+1 band needs some fullness.

Jury is still out on the harmonies, as I'm not sure it was really working (I set up the bass through the feed instead of as advised, the guitar, hoping for the root/harmonics to drive it)

Set up the harmony button for "high" expecting 5ths or octaves.

Will post more as I investigate...

Saw a few old posts on "effects" category, but this seems like the place...

Your comments welcome..
 
#2
These things need an interval to work right. Root and third, root, third, fifth is even better, add 7th, 9th, ... even better. Try it with the guitar. Or if you use midi backing tracks you can send the midi notes as a chord them. ie. pick a midi track that just sends chord notes for every chord change. It doesn't need to hear or play the chords, just needs to know what it is to harmonize to.
 
#3
Those Helicon pedals will work fine with bass, but you need to spell out at least the root + 3rd.

IMO, those pedals can add some nice subtle polish to your live sound, but only if you take the time to work out the voices you want and the levels. When the pedal's set with harmonies unchanging and blaring, it screams sad Vegas lounge.

Bring it home, roll some of your own presets, and learn how to play the pedal.
 
#4
derrico1 said:
Those Helicon pedals will work fine with bass, but you need to spell out at least the root + 3rd.

IMO, those pedals can add some nice subtle polish to your live sound, but only if you take the time to work out the voices you want and the levels. When the pedal's set with harmonies unchanging and blaring, it screams sad Vegas lounge.

Bring it home, roll some of your own presets, and learn how to play the pedal.
Click to expand...

This. I have one (Voicelive 3 I think, don't really use it anymore). I found mine kind of defaults to a major chord if you just give it the root. However - by experimenting with what you are playing AND what you are singing you can usually trick it into getting whatever chord you want.
 
#5
I use a Digitech Live 3 with my band, a three piece. I run a chord over to the guitar player's pedalboard and plug into the unused right channel out of his last effect. (He only uses the left.) It works great.

I made up a chord with a small transformer in the plug on his end, so the grounds are isolated to avoid ground loops.

I sat in with another band, and ran the trigger cord to the line out on his Egnator head.
 
#7
I own two Helicon pedals...a Harmony GXT and a Voicelive Play.

I use the GXT On gigs for filling out backing vox harmonies (since I'm the only other vocalist) and our lead vocalist uses the Voicelive.

We don't use harmonies on the lead vocals, except for the occasional octave doubling, but just use it for reverb and delay presets. It works really well for a band like ours where all the 'mix' is done from the stage, since you can simply program the effects for each song into its own patch and even our vocalist can just step through the presets. The Voicelive also works great on harmony vox (which is what it was bought for - to replace the GXT)

The GXT is OK, but is earlier generation stuff and although you can use it by feeding it a root and third from your bass, it works better if you use it in 'manual mode' and preset the key and scale...but then it doesn't have enough patches for a whole set....not too much pf a problem because a) there are some songs where I don't use any effects b) there are some songs with no backing vox, but I must admit I really need the lead vocalist to get his own unit now so that I can reclaim the Voiceplay for backing vox...it is so much better.
 

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