I love music with vocal harmonies. So as a songwriter it was great once I had multi-track technology. I could layer vocal harmonies for days. But what I found was that I didn’t always know what melodies would lend themselves to good harmony singing.
What I needed was something that could generate harmonies in real-time. And along came, the TC Helicon pedal Harmony Singer.
In a nutshell, here’s how it works: You plug in your microphone, then out of the pedal you have second microphone cable taking the sound to your mixing console (or computer interface). Then you connect a guitar, using a standard guitar cable. As you sing and play, the pedal can generate vocal harmonies based on the chords that you play on the guitar! So cool!
With the new Harmony Singer pedal from TC Helicon, I can write songs and have the sound of backing vocalists while the song is still unfinished.
Although it’s designed to be used with a guitar (acoustic or electric) I have tried using it with a digital keyboard. The result was that it worked pretty well. I would say it was about 90% as accurate, compared to the harmony voices generated by an acoustic guitar.
Overall I am very pleased with how this device performs. It usually creates the correct harmonies, though sometimes it helps to alter your guitar chord voicing to help the pedal recognize what parts to sing. One feature I wish this device had; a second foot switch that would allow me to toggle between having one backing singer to two backing singers. Granted, TC Helicon has other pedals, that seems to offer a performer more functionality/complexity.
I am loving my Harmony Singer pedal, when I unpacked it and plugged it in I found myself jamming with it for about two hours. If you are the type to sing in small venues, coffee shops, etc. This is a quick way to add a backing vocalist to some of your songs, if you can’t get a real person to help you out.
Here’s a video of me showing you the pedal in action:
Creative-Audio-Production.com 