Hi guys,
I'm looking to get a t2 psr3x or even s900!! My question is this....is the harmonizer quality the same on all units? More specifically, I was looking around at TC helicon's line of PITCH CORRECTORS, (sshhh! I can play but i am just an "ok" singer...), and I noticed in a T2 manual that one of the settings is "Pitch correction". How does it work, quality wise? Rather than spend a ton of money on a seperate rack unit for vocal processing, I may consider getting one of these boards...but I'm thinking that it may not be able to convincingly work since I'm never heard anyone talk about it. help!
P.S. I confess....i also wanna do the dreaded Cher Effect...just once!

They are basically all the same on Yamahas.....pitch correction not gonna help you sing better.....you get what you put into it.....the Vocal harmonizers are quirky and MUST be used perfectly with a strong voice and direct positioning besides alot of tweaking to get it right or you will be warbling all over...there is no comparison to TC Helicon, Digitech, and the best I've heard is on a Roland G70, SD1+ is very good also.

Thanks for the quick reply! I realise there are limitations and this is not going to be a magic pill, however i think it should be true that a mediocre singer with perfect pitch should be easier on the ears than a mediocre singer with mediocre pitch! :-) Can you please clarify your last statement? are you saying the roland is the best KEYBOARD harmonizer, or are you saying it's even better than the tc?

You are, I think, referring to a sort of 'Auto-Tune' ability...?

I'm afraid the G70 does not have an 'auto-tune' mode. You HAVE to provide it with a track that contains the melody you want sung, unlike Auto-Tune, or the TC Helicon stuff, which recognizes what pitch you are singing, and automatically re-tunes the voice to the nearest half-step (or scale degree).

However, this works well on SMFs where you want a specific harmony part that either has dissonance with the chords, or runs in a counter melody to the main one.

But without EXTENSIVE work on all your SMFs, it isn't much use as a general 'tune-up' for all your singing. A stand-alone unit from TC or Digitech is probably a good way to get this....

The stand alone units are excellent quality voice recognitions & multifeatured for many types of harmonies.....but its another thing to carry & midi up in your rig rack......

For onboard the Roland G70, Discover 5, Ketron SD1+ are way above the rest.

As there isn't a magic pill for vocal harmony believe me there is a whole other ART FORM besides playing and singing lead to using and generating Vocal Harmonies correctly and believably when performing.....I was taught by the best Uncle Dave .....listen to this & you'll know what I mean.
http://www.boydsongs.com/A%20Nightingale%20Sang.html

Whoaaa.....in the world of harmonization you are a pure jedi master! awesome link. I have much to learn...i assume that was the roland, with maybe a midi track to guide the harmonizer or something?

Korg keyboards have a TC Helicon Harmoniser built in as standard.

Bill

Great choice Donnie, I often refer to that track by Uncle Dave as one of the best uses of a harmonizer I've ever heard. As a matter fact I went and listened to it myself again last week. I'd like to download it, I thought I did once before but now I can't. If anyone knows where I can find it as an mp3 I'd appreciate it.

Thanks for reminding me Bill...that's a good point. I grew up on Tritons too....so I may want to look in that direction....but I'm thinking I'd like pitch correction first and hgarmony second, (I usually sing ad-lib style lead over a live choir or worship team at my church). From what I've read Korg makes u pay a lot extra for the pitch correection feature of the built in TC helicon unit. anyone happen to know what "a lot" is? I was leaning towards the tyros, way expensive.... the s900 looks nice....maybe some combo of the two with a rack, or even the voicelive floor pedal....arrrgh so many choices...brain overload!!!

Download the owners manual for the TC helicon and check out the pitch correction it might not be as automatic as you might think.
I had the voiceworks and never really got into the programing the pitch correction.
They use it alot in a studio to correct a vocal after it has been recorded.
Now I might be wrong I never got that far into it because I only wanted the auto and chord recognition feature.

please tell me more about the pitch correction on the
Korg pa800..it costs extra above the harmonizer that is
included? i never saw that anywhere before, and don't know
why that would be true..how much more is it if true?

I'm a pretty good singer, but when i had the Gem Genesys ProS last summer with the harmonizer, I really liked using
the pitch correction, especially when using harmony parts,
and also for fast scat vocals..for just regular singing i found
it something I 'd rather do without.

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Miami Mo

Mike....Keep in mind unlike myself who uses a left hand chord trigger for harmonies.....Dave uses an unorthodox right hand trigger which makes it a bit more difficult & more intricate with chord vocalization changes using the keyboard in real time if the vocalizer unit will allow it vs the normal triad method most are use to.

I have played with both the TC helicon in the Korg PA1XPRO and the harmonizer in the G70/E80. I think the Roland is by far the smoother of the two. I have found that the Yamaha and Korg require me to "eat" the mic in order to not have any anoying slip ups in the vocals and when I use the Roland, I can sing more naturally and not have to worry as much about how close or loud I sing.
There is a demo mode on the Roland with a "pitch correction" demo where you sing the song Amazing Grace and the pitch correction is dead on perfect. It doesn't matter what pitch I sing, the melody is perfect.
In playing midi files, you need to know how important it is to have your melody track (the track the vocal harmony will follow) be as close to how you sing as possible. Another words, if you were typying in text for a midifile and you want the words to scroll while the song plays, you want the words to be slightly ahead of when you need to read them so that you are always able to look ahead a little.
With vocal harmonizer used for pitch correction, you would want the notes to be there if you anticipate your singing and sing the note just a little before or later in the song.
In the world of recording, there are a few really high end software pitch corrections applications out there and there are studios's that higher proffessionals that know just how to use this software to come into the studio and apply the vocal software just right. It's not that easy to do.
My point is that if you want to use pitch correction, the Roland has done a very good job without having to spend lots of time and money to get it just right.


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George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene
Reseda, California
818-881-5566
www.kayesmusicscene.com

duplicate

[This message has been edited by George Kaye (edited 06-04-2007).]

No Midi file there, thats Dave live singin & playin baby......If Im not wrong it was a Digitech VR rack unit.

George
does that mean that for the pitch correction to work you need to have a midi file with the melody notes? How about if you play the notes for the melody? Is that what they call a vocoder?
So will it follow chord changes like with a style?

[This message has been edited by mikeathome1 (edited 06-04-2007).]

I'm afraid that unless you sing your part EXACTLY the way the track's melody is pre-programmed (and the same way every time!), Roland's Auto Pitch feature is useless for how you describe what you want.

The Korg DOES, however, have a 'real' Auto-Tune function....

I use the real Auto-Tune extensively on studio projects (it's hard to find a record nowadays that DOESN'T use it!). It has two modes.. first is a graphical representation of pitch, and drawing tools to change it. Second is the so-called 'Auto' mode, where you either let it correct the voice to the nearest half-step, or have to tell it what key and mode the voice sings in, and it corrects to that scale.

BUT... you'd better not sing any chromatic passing notes in that mode - it will ignore them. And the chromatic retune mode requires you to sing pretty accurately in the first place before it can tune you up more... What happens when it gets it wrong? Horrible warbles, wrong melodies, and if overdone, the Cher 'Believe' effect (probably not what you want to hear in church!).

As a realtime effect, rather than a post trick for the studio, Auto-Tune is not a 'magic bullet'. It requires good technique before it is effective live, and even there you have problems with monitoring. It is VERY strange to hear yourself sing with your chest voice, but then to hear a retuned version in the monitors! Weird chorusing, and slight delay (it takes a few milliseconds to process the audio), it can be quite off-putting.

Take the money that you would waste on an outboard effect, and spend it on a good vocal coach. Probably money better spent that way...!

The Roland's pitch correction does allow you to just play the keyboard and sing and your voice is singing the notes you play in perfect pitch. You only have to select the right part or the left part of the keyboard or hit both to tell the vocal processor where you want it to follow. This way you can still be playing the left hand styles or the right hand sound and using the pitch correction feature. The other choice is the choose which track of the song you wish the pitch correction to work on.
There is also a vocoder mode which works much like auto pitch correction except that it sounds the entire amount of keys you play as vocal pitches and includes your original voice, where the auto pitch correction is only the one note.
There is also a chordal mode where you play chords and have up to 4 voices of harmony plus your original voice.
On the Roland you can adjust the original voice volume, the vocal harmony volume and the digital effects amount all seperately with dedicated knobs.
Something else to explain:
the pitch correction section is part of the "dry" vocal area, so you always sound just like your original voice sound. The vocoder effect is in the vocal harmony section and therefore is an effect and depending on where you play the keyboard, will make your voice sound more electronic than natural (pitch correction).
I hope this is understandable!


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George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene
Reseda, California
818-881-5566
www.kayesmusicscene.com

Thanks George!

Awesome George!!! Still a lot of choices, but thanks to you at least they're clear ones!

Thanks, George, for the extra info... Yes, the Roland will do that, but I have a feeling that maximus's post described the TC Helicon unit, which does a regular 'Auto-Tune' mode, and I think he's looking for an arranger that does that too... (AFAIK, the PA1X only?).

It still takes considerable skill to play EXACTLY what you are singing, unless it is the simplest and stiffest of melodies, and of course, it also stops you from playing anything else!

I just think that, although these arrangers CAN do something close-ish to what he describes, the results range from horrible to barely acceptable, and involve more musical compromises than he may be prepared to accept...

It's a LOT different adding harmonies to an already good lead voice than replacing that lead voice altogether with a retuned version...

Let us not forget, if this WAS doable easily, every singer in the world would already be doing it instead of using tapes when their voice is off (due to illness or dancing gymnastics!)... They already use it in the studio, they would use it in a flash live if it actually WORKED well....

Great point....I recently read that Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas was suspected to be using a harmonizer/pitch corrector during a recent live performance...and it's been rumored that Brittany has been using one forever now, and come to think of i...as i write I'm having a flashback of THE one and olny Cher singing "Believe" live on ...what was that show..."solid gold"???? man that was a repressed memory...but to be fair she was likely lip-synching...right? lol. oh well, maybe some good ole fashioned reverb and chorus can help me out too!

diki you are correct voice pitch correction/moddelling is only available as an option on the PA1x/pro.....actually there was a thread on the SOS forum i think it was where billy joel apparently sang the anthem with auto tune at the super bowl??? i think it was....anyhoo you should have read the many posts that derided him for doing so, saying they would prefer something a little "off-key" than the results coming out of the auto-tune box.....FWIW i used to own a PA1Xpro and bought the pitch correction option, and used it exactly.....0!!!! used the voice modelling once at a party!!biggest waste of $300 ever...
cheers
dennis

Some of the big stars ARE using Auto-Tune on shows, but ONLY with an engineer to run it, and it never gets into the monitors. If someone 'rides' the controls, inputs key and mode changes in (or a sequence track puts them in at the right point), and changes the amount needed and the speed of the re-tune in real time, then it does work (to a certain extent).

But unattended, it's a recipe for disaster!