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Product Review: The Harmonizer - Messing With The Fabric Of Time And Harmony

14th Nov 2006, 15:01 GMT

Ever since George Martin overdubbed everything from tape loops and backwards effects to whole orchestras on The Beatles' songs, popular music has relied pretty heavily on what's called "ear candy" to entice the listeners' ears. Today's PC-based recording programs, popular with home recordists, are capable of all of the ear candy that George Martin had at his disposal -- and then some. But it's always worthwhile to revisit the tricks of the past, and add them to our modern-day sonic palettes. And along the way notice that what was cutting edge back then has been surpassed by a whole new level of technological advancement. Enter The Harmonizer Beginning in the mid-1970s, an increasingly popular way to add lots of ear candy to a recording was with a product created by the Eventide H910, the first of a line of Eventide, Inc.'s rack-mounted effects under their Harmonizer brand name (which has since become a registered trademark of Eventide). Led Zeppelin loved this product so much that live, they ran Robert Plant's vocals through a Harmonizer (the slightly later H949 model, apparently) on certain songs, to allow him to sing harmonies with himself. Jimmy Page installed one in his equipment rack to use it on his guitar solos. But it was on recordings that the Harmonizer made its true mark. On Coda, Zeppelin's 1982 swan song, John Bonham's drum solo "Bonzo's Montreux" was extensively treated by Page with a Harmonizer to make Bonham sound like he was playing steel drums and a battery of other tuned percussion. David Bowie used it on "Fame" for the bits where the song's title seems to swoop up and down in pitch. When asked by Bowie how the Harmonizer works, Tony Visconti, his producer replied that "it f***s with the fabric of time!'" Well, it's not quite at that level of science fiction. But the harmonizer does sample the audio that's fed into it, and after a virtually imperceptible lag time of a few milliseconds, it spits it out at a higher or lower pitch. And it doesn't have to be a full octave or third or fifth higher or lower than the original vocal. Because while the original Eventide Harmonizer sounds pretty funky transposing vocals when they're that far beyond the original pitch (though its not as bad with instruments, as we'll discuss in a moment), it does a great job of doubling vocals, when it's used for much more subtle effects. Two recent VST plug-ins for PC recording programs illustrate the alpha and the omega of electronic harmony generators. Audio Damage Goes Back To The Future While the instruction manual for Audio Damage's Discord V2 plug-in discreetly says, "Discord is a digital pitch-shifter and delay plug-in, modeled after a particular vintage unit which is still highly desired for its vocal-doubling abilities and chorusing effects", the English MusicThing blog is rather more emphatic. They describe the Discord as "A VST plug-in which sounds like the legendary Eventide Harmonizer H910, which 'f***s with the fabric of time'. It's a pitch-shifter and delay, which does subtle double-tracking or massive stereo warping bwoyoyoing effects." Just plugging in a guitar or a synth and flipping through Discord's presets, it's amazing how many classic effects from the late 1970s and early '80s are there: Trevor Rabin's massive harmonized lead guitar tone from Yes's "Owner of a Lonely Heart". The dub effects on the Rolling Stones' "Undercover of the Night", the pitched snare drum from Bowie's "Sound and Vision" and all sorts of swirling pitched feedback loops perfect for a song's break or ending. One tip to tweaking the effect is to pull the mixing knob on the Discord GUI back slightly, so that the harmonized effects are placed behind the lead instrument rather than competing with it. Also, adding some additional delay or chorusing afterwards helps to further smooth out the sounds. For fifty bucks, there's a lot of bang for the buck in this plug-in, and a lot of fond memories, as well. For special effects, and for instruments, it's a natural, particularly since Eventide's own H910 clone is currently only available for Pro Tools, and retails at ten times the cost of Discord. Harmony4 Is The Future In contrast, TC-Helicon's Harmony4 for their VST-based PowerCore hardware effects module represents either modern electronic harmonization's state of the art, or something much, much closer to it. (Which is reflected in its $599 price.) As the number in its name implies, it can dial up to four harmony voices, for instant quartets. (Actually quintets: you can blend up to four virtual Harmony4 vocalists behind a non-modified vocalist.) Comparing Harmony4 with the vintage vibe captured by Discord illustrates 30 years of technological advancement, especially in regards with to formant modeling. Merriam-Webster's online dictionary defines formants as "a characteristic component of the quality of a speech sound; specifically: any of several resonance bands held to determine the phonetic quality of a vowel". They're the key to successful voice modeling, as they create the character and timbre of a voice. Just to pick two extremely disparate voices from random, the vocal formants of Mariah Carey are very different from, say, James Earl Jones, which is why the timbre of their voices sound so different. But early harmonizers like the Eventide H910 weren't designed to take formants into account, which is why traditionally, the further a voice is raised or lowered from its original pitch, the phonier (and often sillier) it sounded. Prior TC-Helicon products, such as their VoiceModeler plug-in for PowerCore were a remarkable improvement in this area. The VoiceModeler can dramatically change a voice's timbre, but it's not designed to impact its pitch, beyond creating octave lower or higher voices. And while VoiceModeler is still a great product for that purpose, Harmony4 goes beyond it to allow for harmonies to be created up to two octaves higher or lower or than the base voice-and for dialing in the tone of each of voice. Each voice has a knob on the Harmony4 GUI called Gender, which adjusts an icon above it, shifting the icon from a burly looking man to woman to a small child, as the timbre of the harmony vocal becomes thinner and higher. Additional adjustments on the GUI which impact vibrato and phrasing will further customize the timbre of the harmony vocal. Multiply that times four, and you can see how a unique sound for each harmony situation can be crafted. While Harmony4 isn't going to put the Everly Brothers or Simon & Garfunkel out of business, it's absolutely terrific for someone recording alone who needs additional voices on a demo. Or if you've recorded a vocalist who's gone home, and you want to add additional harmonies at key points in a song (say at the chorus or refrain). Or decide at the mixing stage that a song could benefit from additional harmonies. In times past, the ability to sing in pitch was absolutely critical for any vocalist. While it's still important, between the variety of vocal tuning plug-ins such as Antares' Auto-Tune, Celemony's Melodyne, Cakewalk Sonar's built-in V-Vocal plug-in and TC-Helicon's own Intonator, it's now possible to make a mediocre vocalist sound on-pitch. (Doing all your pitch correction before running the lead vocal through Harmonizer will make your life much easier, obviously). And an average vocalist sound much, much more passable. Purists will scoff, but as with previous advances in this area, smart home recordists will take immediate advantage of these new technologies.

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