Are there any free harmonizer plug-ins out there?

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Music Afficionado
Member Since: Aug 12, 2008

Or is that only part of the autotune suite? Thanks.

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Czar of Midi
Administrator
Since: Apr 04, 2002


Oct 12, 2009 10:09 pm

Have you tried a search on KVR yet.

www.kvraudio.com

They have pretty much anything you can think of for free. Not going to be Antares but many of the freeware plug's are pretty damn good.

Music Afficionado
Member
Since: Aug 12, 2008


Oct 13, 2009 08:53 am

Thanks Noize - I'll check it out.

Member
Since: Jul 02, 2003


Oct 13, 2009 08:26 pm

There are no free ones that I know of, but it's been awhile since I went hunting. You can probably find a few pitch shifters, but that's about it.

Dan

Czar of Midi
Administrator
Since: Apr 04, 2002


Oct 13, 2009 08:53 pm

Try this for one. www.kvraudio.com/get/1590.html
It is based off of a pitch type plug but it appears to do harmonizing as well.

And here is the page with a bunch of pitch type pluggin's.
www.kvraudio.com/get.php?...t=1&rpp=100

OD, I do remember as well searching a while ago. I thought I'd give it a shot though under pitch and got a couple that look good.

Before Autotune and the like the only thing that did harmony was and Eventide and back in the 70's that unit would have set you back nearly 10 grand. Today's pluggins are pretty cheap as are the units that do harmony in hardware.

But us cheap tweakers used pitch shifters all the time and just tweaked each track to a different pitch with them. Then you had your harmony.

Member
Since: Jul 02, 2003


Oct 15, 2009 01:04 am

Yeah pitch shifters can work in a pinch, the only problem is you always run into those notes that don't fit and of course I haven't seen any that allow you to control the formants if doing vocals.

I think the best software for harmony's right now is Melodyne, but it takes a bit of work since it doesn't work in real time and doesn't automatically generate the harmony from a vocal. It will get you close with scale snap but you still have to go in and edit those notes that don't fit. But it's amazing how far you can transpose notes in it without it sounding wierd (chipmunk syndrome. :) Even my voice works doesn't do as good a job.

VVocal included with Sonar will do a decent job as well if you don't go above about a 3rd.

It is something how inexpensive the software and hardware solutions available today compared to the 70's & 80's, heck probably even the 90's.

Dan

Byte-Mixer
Member
Since: Dec 04, 2007


Oct 15, 2009 03:24 am

I was curious and went hunting myself and came across a couple that seem to try to do what Celemony does.

VisualVox VST (freebie)
www.kvraudio.com/get/2911.html

and
GSnap (another freebie)
www.kvraudio.com/get/2192.html

Visual Vox I think tries to be somewhat similar to Melodyne's Celemony. You feed it a wave, transfer it to the editor, and then it tries to guess the individual notes, which you can select and adjust individually. I didn't really get into seriously tweaking it, so the run of the mill sound was "okay" It did some wierd things between notes where I think the waveform confused it a bit. So it wasn't as "clean" as it could be. But it could probably be cleaned up with more tweaking.

GSnap seemed to work sorta okay, and I think I liked it slightly better for auto-tuning. It did make the tuned notes sound slightly off, but mixed with a dry track it wasn't too horrible. It also seems to have a pretty high review rating.

Edit: forgot about the harmony part. Visual Vox does let you generate a harmony from the fed wave file, but I'm not sure how to adjust it. It places it a major 2nd above the original. But I'm not sure where you adjust it to get it to place it say a 3rd 4th or 5th.

Kinda interesting to play with for sure though.

Member
Since: Sep 30, 2009


Oct 15, 2009 09:47 am

Cool :] i think i might try some of these out. Harmonies always bug me b.c. my natural voice doesn't have a huge range. I can get about an octave above middle C, and even then i'm starting to strain and can't do large leaps. My head voice is pretty weak, and i don't want to always do falsetto on the harmonies just b.c. they're out of range.

Even if major tweaking is necessary, who cares? It's saving me the money of actually buying a program :]

Byte-Mixer
Member
Since: Dec 04, 2007


Oct 15, 2009 08:22 pm

Well, that's certainly not a bad attitude to have. I think a lot of us home-studio types tend to think on the same line. It's not so much -what- you use, but -how- you use it that matters. Especially when you're learning and getting the concepts and some of the applications of those concepts under your belt. Granted the more sophisticated software makes things easier for you later on when you can afford them.

My voice isn't exactly that great either (I'm a baritone/1st bass) but the more I work at it, the better in-tune I am. Problem is I have this bit of a natural vibrato that can be hell to tame sometimes, (I usually end up a bit flat, but sometimes it goes sharp on me) so that's usually what I end up struggling with, and it takes a lot of focus to keep it under control and in-tune.

That said, GSnap tended to play with my vocals better than VisualVox as far as a "slap it on" kinda effect. I might even consider using it in the future. (if I can ever remember where I put the lyrics I wrote down for crazy-lady-driver) ;)

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