REVIEW: TC-HELICON Voicetone Harmony-G
Review by: Joe Gillespie – Joe runs a web site, www.joesjamblog.com, dedicated to the Line6 Spider Jam.
TC-HELICON Voicetone Harmony-G
About ten years ago, I bought a vocal harmony device, I can’t remember the brand. It was rack-mounted and required a MIDI keyboard to be connected to it. Singing into a microphone and playing a chord on the keyboard produced pitch-shifted harmonies. The trouble was, it sounded like a choir of robots, most unnatural and frankly, too embarrassing to use. It gathered dust until finally ending up in my growing heap of unwanted electronic scrap.
Recently, I saw a demo of the TC-Helicon Voicetone Harmony-G pedal. The harmonies it produced sounded much more like the real thing. Instead of a MIDI keyboard, it takes its instructions from an electric or electro-acoustic guitar. You strum a chord, sing into a microphone and the box makes the harmonies based upon what you are playing. I had to have one. Unlike the earlier disaster, this one is very impressive.
On the back of the sturdy metal case, there is an XLR microphone input, an input jack for guitar and a guitar output jack to take the guitar signal to a guitar amp. There are two XLR output sockets, one giving the original voice mixed with harmony and the second giving an option to split original and harmony signals to two mixing desk channels.
TC-HELICON Voicetone Harmony-G (rear)
The controls on top give various two or three-part harmony presets producing a combination of 3rd and 5th intervals above and below the original pitch plus whole octaves. There is also a comprehensive set of reverb and echo effects and a very useful ‘doubling’ effect which gives a double-tracking sound that really thickens-up vocals by adding a second voice in unison.
Rotary knobs control the levels of effects, guitar and harmony. An input control can be used to get the optimum mic level in conjunction with a clipping LED. Another button labeled ‘Tone’ engages something called the ‘Live Engineer Effect’ adding subtle EQ and compression to the voice.
The five ‘factory’ presets each have A and B variants so you might want just simple vocal doubling for the verses of a song and when you press a footswitch, it adds harmony for the chorus. A second footswitch provides a complete effects bypass. If you want to tweak a preset, to change the harmony structure or effect, its just a matter of making the changes with the buttons and holding down the preset button for a few seconds to make your changes stick. If 5 presets are not enough (or too many) there is a way of accessing up to ten preset memories or, in my case, reducing the number to three. I have quite deep voice so I can’t really use the lower harmony options but they would be useful for someone with a higher pitch. My set of presets are simply 3rd up and 3rd + 5th up producing duet and trio effects. To these I add options of reverb or echo to suit the style of the song.
To produce the correct harmonies, the Harmony-G needs chords to be played cleanly on a guitar and at a certain level. If you turn the guitar volume control down too far or stop playing for any length of time, it can lose track so, steady playing at a constant volume is the best plan. If you use the guitar-out jack, you can control levels from your guitar amp otherwise the guitar sound is added to the voice mix.
I’ve used the pedal for live gigs both as the soloist and as a ‘backing group’ and the results are quite amazing. The first time I kicked-in the harmonies in front of the band at a rehearsal, their collective jaws dropped in unison!
I haven’t done any recordings using the unit yet but I can see that taking the original vocals to one track and the harmonies to a second would be the best way to go for fine tuning the mix.
Where I have no problems whatsoever with the quality of the sounds produced, I do have a few niggles about the interface and with the operation of the footswitches in particular. Where the left switch is supposed to switch between A and B variants of a preset, it has an alternative mode which makes it cycle through all the presets in the same way as pressing the ‘Preset’ button does. To go from one mode to the other requires holding the footswitch down for a short time. Unfortunately, the time period is much too short and it is very easy to press the footswitch and end up in the wrong mode mid-song, which can lead to red faces all round! TC-Helicon really need to rethink this process, either by disabling the mode switching option altogether or making the mode switch-over time much longer.
My other problem is with the red indicator LEDs. They are in a horizontal bar arrangement where the light from one spills sideways into the next making it difficult to tell what’s going on. Were the lights better separated visually, or better still, of different colors, usability would be improved in a hectic, live performance environment.
Whether you are a solo artist or play in a group, the Harmony-G will improve and expand your vocals. At its simplest, it will give you a palette of very useful vocal effects. If you want a ‘bigger’ sound, you can kick-in some vocal doubling. The harmony effects are very natural and impressive and if used sparingly and tastefully, can really enhance your performance.
http://www.tc-helicon.com/voicetoneharmonyg.asp
TC-Helicon Voicetone Harmony-G
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