EQ Magazine - October 2008 - (Page 60)

by David Royer DIGITECH VOCALIST LIVE 4 PRICE: $699.95 STRENGTHS: Surprisingly non-robotic harmonies. Plenty of other effects for enhancing your voice. Uncannily accurate tracking. LIMITATIONS: No MIDI input. Footswitches require care to make sure you hit the right one. DigiTech was first with a harmony synthesizer that followed your guitar playing—the Vocalist Live 2 ($499.95). A smash hit, and deservedly so, it spawned the Vocalist Live 4 covered here as well as the rack-mounted Vocalist Live Pro ($849.95), which includes a MIDI input so that its harmonies can also track keyboard MIDI data. I’ve used the Vocalist Live 4 in the studio since it came out, and have incorporated it into my work with the band EV2 to give a bigger live sound (important for a twopiece). In the studio, I prefer to do my own overdubs but still use the VL4 thanks to one of its strongest assets: It does much, much more than just generate harmonies, although of course that’s the focus. It can create vocals that don’t sound like me, and includes a raft of signal processing such as pitch correction, EQ, dynamics control, de-esser, modulation, noise gate, reverb, delay, and the like—I often use it as a “vocal strip” even when not doing harmonies. For live use, it even includes guitar effects (and a tuner), so singer/songwriters may not need to bring their effects to the gig. Although DigiTech promotes this as a guitar-oriented processor, I’ve used it successfully with keyboards and recorded signals. When I asked DigiTech why they didn’t promote this aspect of the box, they said that the MusIQ technology that recognizes chords and patterns is optimized for guitar, and while it does work with keyboard audio, it’s not really supported because it’s possible to come up with patches that confuse it. Okay . . . but if you get a VL4, don’t be afraid to try it out with keyboards and synths, too. The harmonies are convincing enough that you can mix them up pretty high in the studio, and they’ll blend well with other tracks. For live use, I prefer mixing the harmonies in the background, thus “thickening” my voice but without calling too much attention to the harmonies; I don’t want it to seem like I’m “cheating” . . . even if I am! MA-201 fet “The MA-201fet is big and fat, and packs an extra midrange punch that sounds great on vocals, drums and guitars.” Michael Wagener - Engineer; Ozzy Osbourne, Metallica, Skid Row, Extreme, King’s X Visit mojaveaudio.com for studio photos and audio samples. Introducing 818.847.0222 Burbank, CA 60 EQ OCTOBER 2008 www.eqmag.com http://mojaveaudio.com http://mojaveaudio.com http://www.eqmag.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of EQ Magazine - October 2008

EQ Magazine - October 2008 Contents Talk Box Sounding Board Punch In Smashing Pumpkins Guitar Trax Bass Management Key Issues Drum Heads Vocal Cords Mix Bus Cheat Sheet Cakewalk Sonar 7 Steinberg Cubase 4 Studio Meets Stage Gear for the Studio and Stage Sounds Room with a Vu

EQ Magazine - October 2008

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