Just shooting from the hip (thinking out loud, without a whole lot of research), if the harmonizing program was forewarned of the song’s key, then harmonizing would be super easy, and latency free for all practical purposes. It would just read the note number just starting to play and output MIDI Note On commands for the notes that don’t clash with it (from pentatonic or other scales). The Note Off commands would follow when the Note Off command for the original note was read. Well at least that could be one way to do it.
Really good information here on harmonizers. Thanks everyone for the input!
For my purposes, I just have a few songs I’d like to do a harmony part on. Mostly sax, but I’d like to try it on the part of the guitar solo in Hotel California that has guitar harmony as well. I have a Fractal Audio Axe FX I use in a band scenario (as opposed to my MIDI/computer based solo stuff) that has that type of harmonizer and it’s sufficient in that context.
For the sax VST, if it follows the MIDI note info (as opposed to the audio), it would be good if it passed along the Breath Controller expression info (velocity and vibrato) along with the harmony note. I’m out of my league here, but I’m thinking the generated harmony would be directed to another instance of the sax vst, hence the desire for expression info.
So, I’m thinking a basic VST where you can specify a key and it will follow the melody line should be fine. We’ll see!
Apologies for the long post!
Thanks for the good feedback!
Tom
Hey Torsten
A guitarist in one of my long standing bands has been using TC Helicon for background vocals several years now. Of course, his guitar sets the chords, and after learning how to use his guitar patterns and setting voices in different songs, he is nailing harmonies. It does sound a little robotic at times. I also work with VoiceLive in another band and it performs very well.
As to a VST, Nectar 3 pretty much does what you are asking for, although I am not sure about generating midi chords at output. It is not cheap ($249), but is on sale now for $174, which is cheaper than upgrading my Nectar 2 at $199. I am demoing it now, and so far it is working very well live, even though it is made for production. I use Nectar 2 in an occasional live duet, and it does well. I believe the 3 version has a new harmony engine, and so far I have not been disappointed in testing.
I am also getting good results in some newer modeled guitar pedals. Those of the past were not very good. The harmonies are very superior to most harmony engines, especially in live use, which they are made for. I’ve not used them for vocals yet, due to time restrictions, but for instrument harmonies they performed well at recent gigs.
I spent the last 4 yrs testing VST harmony engines, and everything failed for live use. I learned from you how to use the VoiceLive in a C3 setting, and I thank you for that info. I don’t own a VoiceLive, or TC Helicon…yet. I am, however, hoping Nectar 3 is the end of my search. Once I get a few hours, I will test further and post any results here.
Regards
Corky
I’ve checked out the Nectar 3 documentation, and so far not a lot has changed vis-a-vis Nectar 2 regarding setting its scales: as I understand it, you either
- set a scale in the plugin’s GUI (in the new version, in the “Pitch” module) - Nectar will then automatically pitch harmonies to fit with the scale - or
- play the exact notes for the individual voices via MIDI. Nectar will create harmonies with the exact MIDI notes you play
As long as you stay within one scale in your harmonies, this works, but as soon as you want your harmonies to follow chord changes, I don’t see a way to do this live by simply playing your piano parts and Nectar recognizing your chords and setting the scale accordingly.
So I don’t really see Nectar 3 replacing my VL - or am I missing something?
Cheers,
Torsten
I used Pitchproof on a little experimental cover instrumental I did recently:
You can hear Pitchproof on the sax, starting about a minute in. I only played one sax line in that song; I believe Pitchproof is the top line. Two things I ran into:
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If you change keys, you have to do it in Pitchproof too. In fact, since I have a modulation in there, I actually loaded two copies of Pitchproof and just automated one off and the other one on at the appropriate place. Maybe not a good situation to be in for live performance.
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If you listen closely, you’ll hear a couple of notes where I had to turn Pitchproof off, because the harmony briefly went outside of the standard key scale. In those spots, you’ll only hear one sax sound for a note or two. I wanted to make this as though it were being played by a little combo where the sax player was using a doubler.
Neither one of these things is particularly a big deal in recording, and Pitchproof sounds good to my ears, but for live performance, if I were you I’d look into hardware designed for live performance. Or even a more full-featured plugin that can react to a pedal or something. A hardware or software solution that can auto-detect the key would be super amazing, though, for live performance!
Moral of the story: don’t be seduced by “free” if it’s not everything you need! 
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