TC-Helicon Vocal Processors

[counterpoint]

Is anyone using any TC-Helicon products as part of their live and/or home studio set-up...particularly one of the harmonizers and/or pitch correctors? Any thoughts/recommendations?

[HAMEGZ]

long time TC user here, starting with the quintet, voice one, and the Poco Software versions.

 

The best unit to me was the original Voice Live floor unit. Its pitch correction and tracking are stellar.I tried the VL touch and although it has more bells and whistles, did not track or correct as well.

 

When I say correct, yes it does Tpain, but I am speaking of true correcting to target pitch without Cher artifacts.

 

I use midi chord feature to control the harmonization.

 

I know there's a divided camp here, but I use mine strictly as emulating back up vocals male, female, barbershop, only. I don't try to do solo vox with the harmony accomp.Having said that, you can if you set the harmony levels accordingly.

 

Sure its not the real thing, but mixed properly through the PA sounds convincing. Someone in the crowd is always looking for the chick singers..

[Ken Beaumont]

No Harmonizer, but I sometimes use the mic mechanic. Provides subtle compression and adaptive EQ. I only use the pitch correction when I'm on the second night of singing in a certain smoke filled bar. By the second night my is almost trashed. So I turn on the pitch correction slightly. I can't tell if its really doing it or if I feel a little more confident because its there. I never use the reverb on it though it is excellent. We use a nice lexicon reverb in the PA so its not needed. At home when I'm recording I use a good condenser mic, and have any effects I need so no need for it.

[keyman27]

I have the Harmony-M pedal. It's a lot of fun. It has MIDI and it reads the chords you are playing, in order to give you appropriate harmonies. It works, mostly. The real fun comes when you use it in Manual mode, which is sort of a vocoder-like mode.

[J. Dan]

I'll have to apologize for not being familiar with the specific models. I've played in bands with others who have used them, and my experience is based only on that. My current 5-pc initially had 2 band members using them for pitch correction and compression, I guess. Honestly, for whatever reason, the guys with the "pitch correction" seemed to be more off that the 2 of us without, and on top of it, were always having gain issues and feedback problems. Sound guys bitched up a storm. Finally I talked them into not using them anymore, and the vocals are far better now than they were with the pedals. Leave vocal processing to FOH, and if you can't sing on key, don't sing.

 

Now harmonizers...I'm generally against them in a full band setting where you should have enough guys to cover the harmonies. 2 guys can cover a lot. If you got 3 guys that can sing, you should be able to cover just about anything, even if you're missing a harmony. 4 guys who can sing - there's no excuse. I don't mind solo guys doing it, and in some cases duo. Nobody's hiding anything - obviously it's an effect - and there are songs that just need to have SOME sort of harmony. My guitar player in my duo brought one to practice that he uses when he plays solo. It does 2 harmonies with a selector for 2 down, 1 up/1 down, or 2 up. He runs his guitar through it and it bases harmonies on that. For most songs we don't use it even if we're missing harmonies. 2 vocal parts can SUGGEST the harmonies enough that I don't think we usually need it. Sometimes though, when it's a lead with a bunch of harmonies behind it, it works well. He can sing a line and have all the harmonies behind me. But again, usually those are cases where he's singing something different than me - so it's obviously an effect on his voice singing behind my lead.

 

It cracks me up when he accidentally hits a wrong chord on the guitar and even though he's singing the right note it creates a god-awful harmony, LOL.

 

We also use the KRONOS vocoder, which I consider a completely different thing...Obviously a synthetic effect and no attempt to fake vocals. Plus it's a lot of fun!

[MHz]

I'm also using Harmony M pedal.

One thing I don't like about it is that I can't set delay time/repeat. You have three delay presets to choose from and none of them are good.

I'm not sure if this can be improved by a firmware update.

[podmed]

I've got the VoicePlay Live and the Harmony M. I tend to use it for complex harmonies (with 3 other real vocalists). We just covered "Carry On Wayward Son", and gives a good full harmony for the intro of the song.

 

Also use it for our Hair Band High Vox Harmonies (singing falsetto). If you tell the harmonies to stay "Low & Lower", sounds cool!

 

Otherwise, sounds kind of cheesy while using just for a lead vox / harmony.

[Ian Benhamou]

Leave vocal processing to FOH, and if you can't sing on key, don't sing.

 

^^^^^^THIS^^^^^^^^^^^^^

[VanDerGraaf]

I've recently got a Voicelive 2, as much for my own use (I'm a singer) to some extent. I've been trying it out in my covers band which has only two vocals (the lead guy and me).

For simple things like an extra voice or two on b/vox it works so well.

Eg in "The Chain", "listen to the wind blow" etc, having that major third on top of my harmony really works, or the "woah, oh" in the chorus of "Living On A Prayer" just to beef things up.

 

Unfortunately stage levels are high (sometimes too high) and in tight situations you can get a lot of spill which is not cool. I'm not really bothered about taking it out again.

 

For these units it depends what you want them for- for studio use I'm almost tempted to say don't bother- you'll find better mic pre's easily and likewise for the fx.

 

For live gigs though they can be very useful. Especially if you have sensible stage levels.

 

But the bottom line is, if three of you can sing in your band I hardly imagine you'd need them.

[HAMEGZ]

there are various gate adjustments in the TC stuff to try to alleviate the spillover from loud sounds, positioning of the mic and type of mic, and monitor angle help..

 

But if it it that gawd awful loud on stage nothing helps

[miden]

I use the Harmony M pedal. Only use it with a single harmony voice either up or down depending on the key. Using the multiple harmony voices, for me anyway, is just TOO fake

 

You do need to be careful to disable CC Rx as a bend wheel/lever can give some "interesting" results

[Maarkr]

I have a digitech voicelive 3 and a TC Harmony M. the TC works well, hooked into the midi port. it doesn't have the features of the high end TCs... i'd like to have one of those but $$$. our vocalist plays bass and gets mentally overloaded so he doesn't mess with the voicelive... i just set it up beforehand as a vocal enhancer. they are all ok for live, but I'd never use them for recording a mix... I'd rather control all the fx in the DAW.