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Section 8: Harmony and Tuning
Harmony
Here's where we can go into a little more depth about
harmonies. We've tried to keep it practical, focusing on
what VoicePro can do for you.
Harmony Hold
Truly an innovation, the Harmony Hold feature lets you
sustain the backing harmony voices while you continue to
sing through them. On activation, you can freeze the
syllable the harmony voices are producing, and they will
hold it in a very natural way until you cancel Harmony Hold.
Harmony Modes
VoicePro has five different harmony modes, which offer five
unique methods of creating harmony. Once we get into
describing the more complex harmony modes, we’ll be
showing you examples based on the C major scale. If you
are unfamiliar with this scale we’ve shown C major here.
Notes Mode
In this Mode, you provide the VoicePro with specific MIDI
note information to determine the pitch of the harmony
voices. VoicePro has two “/Notes” harmony modes, single
and 4 channel. The VoicePro may be set to Notes 4
Channel mode through the Harmony Mode Tab. Notes 4
Channel mode allows you to send 4 channels of MIDI
information, including MIDI Pitch Bend, one for each
individual harmony voice. This is the most direct and
flexible way of creating harmonies, allowing you to weave
complex melodies and counter harmonies irrespective of
your lead vocal.
Shift Mode
Also known as “Fixed Interval”, this takes the pitch of your
lead voice and creates harmonies a set number of
semitones away, based on that pitch. The method of
creating harmonies, using a fixed number of semitones
relative to an input note or pitch, is called chromatic
harmony, the theory of which we'll go into later. We
consider this type of harmonizing to be non-intelligent
because VoicePro is not set to any particular key or scale.
These are pure, parallel harmonies. The most common
shift harmony voices are the 5th (7 semitones) and octave
(12 semitones), ranging from two octaves below or above
the input pitch.
Below is The C Major scale, showing third above chromatic
scale harmony, as used in VoicePro Shift Mode.
Black = Lead & Grey = Harmony
Chord Mode
Chord harmonies take your chord information to create
intelligent, diatonic harmonies based on your voice. To
make “Chord” harmonies, you need to input in real time the
chords of the song. This may be done either via MIDI or
through a programmed sequence of chord roots and types
via CC control changes. Chord information consists of the
chord root and type, which define the 3 or 4 notes in a
given chord. In Chord mode Voicepro will only create
harmony voices that fall on the notes of the chord. Chord
harmonies are “intelligent” because they decipher the chord
you’re playing and the note you’re singing to produce
musically pleasing harmonies. When 1 above is defined as
a harmony voice (Up1), the next note from the chord above
the input note is output for that harmony voice.
The subsequent illustration shows the harmony notes for
the C major scale with a voicing selection of a C major
chord and a single “one above”.
Root: C, Chord Type: Maj, Voicing: Up1
Black = Lead & Grey = Harmony
You might have noticed that each harmony note can cover
more than one input note, or that each input note doesn’t
necessarily have a unique harmony note. For instance, C
and D both have E as the 3rd above, E and F share G, and
so on. This gives a more stepped sound to the harmony as
the changes are both greater in magnitude and less
frequent than when using other harmony methods (shift
mode for example). The benefit of this method is that it is
very easy to integrate vocal harmonies into your songs if
you already know their chord progressions!
Scale mode
Scale Harmonies use key and scale information to create
musically correct, diatonic harmonies. Most popular music
uses a single scale, so you usually only have to input the
information at the beginning of your song. “Scalic”
harmonies are more dynamic than the chordal harmonies
because there are unique harmony notes for each input
note. The subsequent illustration shows the harmony notes
for the C major scale with a single “third above” harmony
voice. You can see from the next diagram that the “Scalic”
harmonies are intelligent and closely follow your lead voice
for a tighter sound.
Black = Lead & Grey = Harmony
Under the Harmony Key is a parameter called Smoothing.
When set to 100%, the harmony voices follow your input
pitch, errors and all, but when set to 0%, the harmonies will
jump directly to the scale harmony notes, kind of like a
