The DigiTech Vocalist Live 2, was purely for processing vocals and adding two-part harmonies, triggered by guitar and intelligently following the chords played. DigiTech has now come up with the Vocalist VL3D, a desktop processor with an expanded feature set.

The VL3D’s wedge shape gives easy access to the controls and clear visibility to the illuminated info panel. All the connections are neatly tucked away at the rear, as is the knob to set the input level, although it’s still easily accessed from the front.

The control panel is split into switchable sections that process the vocal signal. The first section offers four knobs to tweak the sound of the voice before any pitch correction or harmonies are added. There’s a noise gate, de-esser, compressor and a ‘warmth’ knob to add simulated valve distortion. The next section applies pitch correction to the voice – tweaking any out of tune notes to fit into a 12-note chromatic scale.

A choice of studio, room and hall reverb can also be added to the overall sound. Adding harmonies to the voice is possible courtesy of DigiTech’s MusIQ Technology, which analyses the singer’s voice to generate the most musically correct harmonies.

“You may not have to rely on the ‘pitch-challenged’ bassist and drummer ever again.”

Two harmonies can be generated by playing guitar chords or, in the case of an unaccompanied singer, by using the unit’s front panel buttons to set the key and scale for a particular song. For each harmony you have an easily understandable choice of bass, lower, low, double, high, higher or octave. Each can take on the natural character of the singer’s voice or have its gender altered!

In addition a ‘humanize’ knob adjusts the perceived naturalness of the harmony voices. A ‘harmony mix’ knob sets the mix of lead voice and harmonies from lead voice only through to harmonies only.

The VL3D contains five programmable memories for storing your settings and each of these can contain two independent settings – Part A and Part B – selected using a front panel switch or an optional footswitch. If two harmonies isn’t enough, up to four harmonies can be created in MIDI mode by inputting MIDI notes into the VL3D.

Sounds

Guitarist’s Simon Bradley puts the VL3D through its paces in the following clip. In each case, you’ll hear the guitar and unadorned voice first:

Plug a mic into the back for singing, plug in your guitar and connect a lead from the guitar thru socket to your amp, tune the guitar using the onboard tuner then choose the vocal sound and harmony voices that you want – setting up is that simple. All that’s left to do is sing while playing rhythm guitar into the VL3D and you’ll find yourself musically valid harmonies that sympathetically follow the song’s structure for an instantly bigger sound.

(2 pages; go to page: 2)

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DigiTech Vocalist VL3D