Ableton Forum

Does anyone have any favorite harmonizers for use in Live (live use)?

Or else, do you have an opinion of why there aren't any?

Thanks for any suggestions!

a good produced track does not need a harmoniser, they where an awful trend in the 80s.

and if there was ever a reasonable one around then it's the eventide or SPL, those ones cost some serious money and are hardware only.

if you mean something for creating vocal harmonies, I use Melodyne.. I know Antares also makes one specific for harmonies.. this is assuming i understand what you mean by harmonizer.. if not, please explain..

edit.. so I looked up what a harmonizer does.. Melodyne can do it, but I am sure dedicated units like the ones I saw are probably better.

I meant (by my parenthetical) only for live Live use.
I agree that Melodyne is an excellent tool for produced tracks.
I intend it for vocal and trumpet harmonies.

I believe Mu-Voice was the one I explored - which had scales, but only normal diatonic ones.
I'm looking for hijaz in particular: 1 b2 3 4 5 b6 b7

Anything out there in the virtual realm?
I know that hardware can do the job...

how do people feel about making a copy of the clip, bumping it in time and adjusting the pitch a bit? never tried it. I imagine you'd want warble in the pitch and time adjustment to make it sound more natural.

curious...

I've found that Complex Pro warping (with the transpose envelope tweeking) does nicely with that technique, Tone Deft.

However, this is not for live use - which is what I'm seeking...

I would imagine an inventive person could use the resonator or frequency shifter with a simple delay on a few sends and get some kind of interesting harmony, maybe even build a rack out of it after experimenting a little.

You know, the thought that keeps nagging at me:

Since Live's clip warping algorithms are evolving so nicely, and they are processing in real time, why can't the transpose function be easily made available (ported over) as an audio effect? If combined with a UI like the MIDI "Scale" plugin Ableton already has the makings of a rather full-featured harmonizer right there in the code.

soundsliketree wrote:You know, the thought that keeps nagging at me:

Since Live's clip warping algorithms are evolving so nicely, and they are processing in real time, why can't the transpose function be easily made available (ported over) as an audio effect? If combined with a UI like the MIDI "Scale" plugin Ableton already has the makings of a rather full-featured harmonizer right there in the code.

maybe because, even while being adjustable in realtime, they need the info of the data of the future of the sample, to be able to adjust it? which would make it bad for an effect, as it would have to introduce lag to handle it.

soundsliketree wrote:You know, the thought that keeps nagging at me:

Since Live's clip warping algorithms are evolving so nicely, and they are processing in real time, why can't the transpose function be easily made available (ported over) as an audio effect? If combined with a UI like the MIDI "Scale" plugin Ableton already has the makings of a rather full-featured harmonizer right there in the code.

I do not have the privilege of Max for Live (M4L) as of yet, are any of these parameters exposed to M4L?

soundsliketree wrote:I've found that Complex Pro warping (with the transpose envelope tweeking) does nicely with that technique, Tone Deft.

However, this is not for live use - which is what I'm seeking...

thanks for the tip!

surely you've seen the digitech vocal harmonizing boxes? I googled a bit yesterday for the box you're looking for, only saw youtubes from 2007 for the Digitech Vocalist.

as a guitar player I don't like using Live for effects due to latency and dealing with all that BS. I'm more in favor of external processing, higher latency and Live's delay compensation.

davepermen wrote:
maybe because, even while being adjustable in realtime, they need the info of the data of the future of the sample, to be able to adjust it? which would make it bad for an effect, as it would have to introduce lag to handle it.

Ah... that could be...

Tone Deft wrote:
surely you've seen the digitech vocal harmonizing boxes? I googled a bit yesterday for the box you're looking for, only saw youtubes from 2007 for the Digitech Vocalist.

Yeah - I have one of those (the 400 I think), but I'm just not that fond of it - sound or build quality.

What I really want is for Eventide to make an AU of the Eclipse.
I'd shell out for that.

I'm pretty sure Waves auto-tune can do non-diatonic microtonal scales....or is it Antares auto-tune? One of those two can definitely handle non-diatonic microtonal...Ive seen it in the menu.

It's not micro-tonal, thought it is modal. Fifth mode of the harmonic minor scale, or commonly known as the Phrygian Dominant. Has the major third but the minor second.

Or take your Phrygian scale and raise the third. In other words this is easily set up in Live's 'Scale' plug.

But I digress.

How to set it up as a harmonizer or find a harmonizer that allows live use locked to the scale in software...I dunno.

That is a tricky one...sorry.

Thanks for the thoughts, folks.

I find it telling that the conversation isn't about what is the best harmonizer but rather, "IS there a live harmonizer that works in Live??"

Eventide, please make an AU plugin.