With the advent of vocal effects within the Headrush Prime and Core standalone units, one of the more popular features among users has been the Vocal Harmonizer. With the ability to add multiple voices and have them harmonize with your voice on the fly, it has become a powerful tool in many user's repertoire. In this article, we're going to go over the parameters of the effect so that you can set it up the way you want to.
To begin, we're going to go over the initial parameters of the first page when the effect is added to your screen.
Page 1
Lead Level and Harmony Level- This is the balance of your clean vocals vs the harmony coming through. As you add more voices to the harmonizer, you may want to turn down that harmony vocal level so as to keep a good balance, and likewise if you are getting too much signal on your OUT block at the end of the rig, you may want to turn down both due to the level of the voices together are providing too much output level for the unit, and may damage your equipment via digital clipping.
Humanize- This is the speed of the unit's tuning and timing of your vocals. At higher percentages, it will delay the tuning speed, allowing those harmonies to come more naturally into their notes via sliding, at lower percentages it will get to pitch faster, though you risk the sound getting more robotic.
Auto-Src- is the input that the harmonizer will listen to to get the chord for whatever you are playing.
Scale Key and Type- is the scale by which the harmonizer will base the harmonies around within a chord.
Octave Split- is how the unit will double a note over the course of the harmonies.
Del Sync- syncs the voice delay of the harmonies as dictated by humanize. When off, the delay parameter will be in Milliseconds on the voices page; when ON the delay will sync to the rig tempo.
Stereo- Allows for the panning of each voice to the Right or Left
Page 2
This is your equalization page, where you balance the gain and frequencies of the overall effect. If for example your high harmonies are coming out harsh sounding for the blend, the frequency can be adjusted here to mellow the sound. Likewise, if your mids are being buried among the voices, the mid EQ can be bolstered to empasize those sounds instead of aiming for one particular voice.
Pages 3-6
These are the pages that describe the individual parameters of each harmony.
Voice #- This is the On/Off toggle for each individual voice.
Mode- Determines how the voice is harmonized.
Pitch- Depending on the mode, this will determine what pitch or part within a harmony that the harmonized voice aims for.
Level- The volume of the individual voice
Pan- The Left/Right pan of the voice within the effect. Please note that if using Pan, this will keep it's panning through other effects after the harmonizer all the way through your output, even through mono effects.
Gender- Affects the Timbre of the voice, with the overall characteristic being more masculine of feminine among the harmony voices.
Delay- A note delay for the individual voice. When used in conjunction with the humanize and Smooth from page 1, can give a slide-like effect within long notes.
Smooth- Affects how smooth the harmonized voice is within the context of your singing and how it tracks your voice being translated to it.