GuitarsCanada
10-05-2007, 01:53 PM
Review Submitted By
Paul
Product Name
Digitech Vocalist Live 4
Would you recommend this product to others?
yes
Your overall review of the product
good
Did you feel there was good value for the money?
yes
it's cheaper than hiring backing singers!
How would you best describe yourself?
Professional Musician
please select a choice
Had the chance to try it out
-----------------------------------------------------
Your full review
This is the item: http://www.digitech.com/products/Vocalist_Live4/
It's an automatic vocal harmonizer that uses an input from your guitar to create smart harmony, based the chord you are playing. Clilck on the demo video, you'll be impressed.
Anyway, the unit knows the note you are singing, the chord you are playing, and depending on the patch you've chosen, will generate up to four harmony voices. The voices include any combination of Octave down, 5th down, 3rd down, Unison, 3rd up, 5th up, and Octave up. You can double some of the voices, but the total remains 4, (+ your own melody note). There are some factory presets which do a remarkable job of replicating the harmonies of CSNY, or the Eagles.
There is a simple pitch correction function too.
I returned the item for 2 reasons:
1) The harmony is based on the most recent chord input. Soooo, if you hit a C-7, and then nothing else, the harmony will stay on that chord. This is fine and dandy if you are playing "Chain of Fools", but that's about it.
Where this becomes a problem is when the melody is syncopated ahead of the beat, but the guitar chord is sync'd behind the beat. For example...in the chorus section of Chicago's "Make Me Smile", the backing vocals are singing the line "Oh My Darling..." "Darling" comes in on the second half of beat four. The harmony should be based on an Ab major chord. But.....the appropriate strum pattern has the guitar hitting the Ab chord on the second half of beat one of the next bar. So either you put up with some wonky sounding harmony, or you strum in such a manner that the rhythmic pattern of your strumming lines up exactly with the rhythmic pattern of your singing. This starts to sound very un-hip in a hurry.
2) As far as singers go, I'm a pretty good....well anything but a singer. This device really showed how poor a singer I am. If I used the pitch correction to get me where I should be, I started to sound like Robot Cher from the hit tune "Believe". So I tried the unit with me playing guitar and somebody else singing. Again, this was not a great plan. The strumming and singing have to be worked out very precisely to get the best effect. This means the singer will be locked into singing everything exactly the same way every time. That's really tough to do.
This device would be fantastic for the prototypical "power single" performer. There is a danger in over using the device, the power of 5 part harmony is cool, but in every song you might start to come across too barbershop-ish. I didn't find it useful for me in the 10 piece horn band in which I had hoped to use it. It's tempting to try and sound like the Temptations, but in the end I confirmed to myself that backing/harmony vocals are best done by vocalists.
It's a great device, but not for me.
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Gear used for this review
It doesn't really matter what guitar/amp you use for this device. If you use an acoustic guitar, it must have a p'up to get the signal through the harmonizer.
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Paul
Product Name
Digitech Vocalist Live 4
Would you recommend this product to others?
yes
Your overall review of the product
good
Did you feel there was good value for the money?
yes
it's cheaper than hiring backing singers!
How would you best describe yourself?
Professional Musician
please select a choice
Had the chance to try it out
-----------------------------------------------------
Your full review
This is the item: http://www.digitech.com/products/Vocalist_Live4/
It's an automatic vocal harmonizer that uses an input from your guitar to create smart harmony, based the chord you are playing. Clilck on the demo video, you'll be impressed.
Anyway, the unit knows the note you are singing, the chord you are playing, and depending on the patch you've chosen, will generate up to four harmony voices. The voices include any combination of Octave down, 5th down, 3rd down, Unison, 3rd up, 5th up, and Octave up. You can double some of the voices, but the total remains 4, (+ your own melody note). There are some factory presets which do a remarkable job of replicating the harmonies of CSNY, or the Eagles.
There is a simple pitch correction function too.
I returned the item for 2 reasons:
1) The harmony is based on the most recent chord input. Soooo, if you hit a C-7, and then nothing else, the harmony will stay on that chord. This is fine and dandy if you are playing "Chain of Fools", but that's about it.
Where this becomes a problem is when the melody is syncopated ahead of the beat, but the guitar chord is sync'd behind the beat. For example...in the chorus section of Chicago's "Make Me Smile", the backing vocals are singing the line "Oh My Darling..." "Darling" comes in on the second half of beat four. The harmony should be based on an Ab major chord. But.....the appropriate strum pattern has the guitar hitting the Ab chord on the second half of beat one of the next bar. So either you put up with some wonky sounding harmony, or you strum in such a manner that the rhythmic pattern of your strumming lines up exactly with the rhythmic pattern of your singing. This starts to sound very un-hip in a hurry.
2) As far as singers go, I'm a pretty good....well anything but a singer. This device really showed how poor a singer I am. If I used the pitch correction to get me where I should be, I started to sound like Robot Cher from the hit tune "Believe". So I tried the unit with me playing guitar and somebody else singing. Again, this was not a great plan. The strumming and singing have to be worked out very precisely to get the best effect. This means the singer will be locked into singing everything exactly the same way every time. That's really tough to do.
This device would be fantastic for the prototypical "power single" performer. There is a danger in over using the device, the power of 5 part harmony is cool, but in every song you might start to come across too barbershop-ish. I didn't find it useful for me in the 10 piece horn band in which I had hoped to use it. It's tempting to try and sound like the Temptations, but in the end I confirmed to myself that backing/harmony vocals are best done by vocalists.
It's a great device, but not for me.
------------------------------------------------------
Gear used for this review
It doesn't really matter what guitar/amp you use for this device. If you use an acoustic guitar, it must have a p'up to get the signal through the harmonizer.
------------------------------------------------------