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singists and funny noises


steve-bbb
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ok putting this in here as seems most appropriate forum ....

sooo....

our singist has one of those little white TC HELICON boxes, in theory and on paper it is a lovely little piece of kit - however in practice, especially in live gigging situation, it is an absolute f(*^@$%*&%^(@*ing nightmare

has/does anybody

a- have a singist who has managed to tame one of these little white devils?

b- utilised alternative hardware to similar effect?

TIA

Edited by steve-bbb
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When Pete and I do our two-some rather than the 5-piece full band, we use its bigger brother for a few of the numbers.




Assuming we're talking using the harmony functions, then used sparingly - and only where it really is appropriate and necessary - it adds a great deal to those songs.

However, I think these sorts of devices are problematic at the simpler and cheaper end of the scale. If you are using them for harmonies, the 'auto' key setting is usually an absolute nightmare...and I think the small pedal version is 'auto' only (may be wrong, of course).

With the bigger one, you can tell it exactly what key the song is in (with modal options too) but even then it takes some sorting. And even then it needs to be used VERY sparingly....

As for the other enhancements and presets...well, it's a bit like presets on a multi-effects pedal, ie would you actually use any of them live???

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  • 1 month later...

Being a singist who makes funny noises, I feel well qualified to comment here..!

I've been using the Voicelive Play GTX for a few years now and if that's the one he's using, I've found it rather frustrating to set up. There's a hell of a lot of menus and maybe I'm too much of a dinosaur to be able to adapt. I prefer knobs...!

I just use the presets but as mentioned above, you can get it to 'listen' to your instrument (which for me is an acoustic guitar) and it will add the harmony style of your choice. I've tried that and ended up looking around for a packet of Gillette....

The presets must be used sparingly like any other effect. Just pop over to YouTube to see the disasters awaiting those who overdo things. But if used properly, you can instantly be in an Eagles tribute band or sound like you have an Everly brother sat alongside you. The harmonies are stunningly good.

What exactly goes wrong when he uses it? 

 

 

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I'm a singist too.

 

I've got 2 TC Helicon boxes - the Harmony Singer and the Mic Mechanic.

 

The HS is very good, but it gets all the harmony info from a guitar. If I'm just chugging R 5 R power chords then it doesn't know if I'm in major or minor - it needs more info to work. When it's done right it works very well. Singing a note and then just swapping between say A major and A minor makes a big difference. You can also give it a bit of a heads-up by playing the intro chord before you actually start the song. As always though - the more subtle in use the better it is. If the generated harmony is too loud then it's a bit crap. Subtle is the key.

 

The MM is awesome. It doesn't do harmonies. It's just really a preamp but it has a preset de-esser, EQ, and compressor in it. There are 2 presets (notionally 1 male and 1 female but it's more about range than anything else) and the tighten up the vocal beautifully. Just set your PA flat and let the MM do the work. It also has verb and some gentle pitch correction. It's always in my gig bag.

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I'm actually primarily a singer and use a TC Voicelive Touch 2 extensively. The thing is, with these units, you really need to devote time to learning them the same way you would an instrument. Understand the menu structure intimately, understand the behaviour of the effects, understand the routing options available to you on the unit. This will better enable you to troubleshoot on the fly in a live situation, rather than leaving you staring at the unit with a perplexed expression wondering why the hell it seems to be stuck on the looper page when you want to disengage that ping-pong delay you only wanted to last for half a bar. Most importantly, set up YOUR OWN presets. You can kill two birds with one stone here as I found I learned my unit most effectively by creating and editing presets, only referrring to the manual when I couldn't get exactly what I wanted on my own.

The factory presets tend to be extreme examples of what you can do with the on board processing power. If you want to use these units in a musically useful band context it's essential in my opinion to fine tune and tweak your own presets in order for them to avoid sounding cheesy. Particularly with regard to things like the harmony and autotune parameters, less is almost always more.

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