Get Great Live Vocal Harmony with a Digitech Vocal Processor
For a singer, whether you are sweating it out night after night in front of a roaring crowd or running take after take in the recording studio, the strain on your vocal cords can be brutal. The pressure on stage for a singer to match the performance on their recorded work can often be unrealistic, and while guitarists, bassists and keyboard players have had access to advanced signal processing to bolster their sound for many years, vocal processing has remained a largely esoteric art. Don’t you sometimes wish that you could just push a button and make those harmonies you have been trying to nail just appear out of thin air? It hardly seems fair that singers have not had many options beyond microphone selection or EQ to help them fine tune their tone on stage or in the vocal booth.
Luckily, that no longer has to be the case. Digitech offers vocalists several weapons they can use to fight back against this double standard. The Vocal 300 is a floor-based vocal processor with an integrated expression pedal and three stomp pedals. This Digitech vocal processor has offers several different types of mic preamp and 38 different effects, such as EQ, distortion, pitch shifting, doubling and digital delay. Whether you are looking for a practice box for singing at home, something with a small form factor to fit in your gig bag or a portable home studio solution, the Vocal 300 is a decent entry level vocal floor processor.
For recreating a more complex vocal effect, there are several other options. The Digitech Vocalist is a powerful digital audio device that can simulate multi part harmonies. This harmony processor bases its harmonies not only on the singer’s vocal pitch but on that of the backing band, allowing for a more natural sounding output. In upgraded form, the Digitech Studio Vocalist EX is an impressive vocalist workstation that offers even greater opportunities for live pitch correction and vocal harmony. Both of these vocal processors are equally useful onstage or in the home studio, depending on whether you require a rack mount effects processor or have the space for a floor unit.
Digitech vocal processors are not all oriented towards recording vocals. The Digitech Talker is a unique device that marries the concept of a guitar talk box with a versatile digital effects interface. When plugged into any instrument the Talker will process the audio and make it sound like your instrument is ‘talking’. With settings that range from NuWah, Talkbox, Alien and AutoTalk, you can ‘sing’ chords, generate washed-out white noise ‘voices’ and even create a vocoder-like effect.
While some music critics hold a low opinion of processed vocals, the reality is that all musical instruments have been subject to electronic manipulation since rock and roll first began to be recorded in the 1950’s. It is hypocritical to canonize guitarists who actively employ digital effects in order to achieve their desired sound while at the same time scoffing those vocalists who wish to hone their craft with the same tools. Digitech processors are perfect for singers who are interested in pushing their sound past the limits imposed upon them by tradition.
