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I would love some good suggestions as to how to set this up when it gets here.



One thing that I would suggest is downloading the PDF version of the Voiceworks manual from TC-Helicon’s website. It might help you get a head start on your understanding of the unit before it gets there, and for another, it will help you ask more informed questions about the operation. Looking over your questions here, they are quite a bit of a shotgun bunch of questions that would probably be more focused if you were more familiar with how the unit operates.

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I want to feed it off a midi track in my songs. what do you do to get that to function properly?


Well, one of the modes is to have harmonies generated from chords that are presented to the Voiceworks either from a prerecorded MIDI track or through real time MIDI performance. The more solid and distinct that the chords are, the better the unit can pick them up and generate the appropriate harmonies. There is an option in BIAB that generates a special track for harmonies when you create a MIDI file from a BIAB song. These work pretty well when communicating with the TC-Helicon harmonizers that I own. If it isn’t obvious, you have to set up your MIDI device to send the chords over a given MIDI channel and the Voiceworks needs to be set up to receive on that same channel in order to work.
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Many reviews say to turn off the EQ to get better sounds, is that true?


If the reviewers mean on the incoming signal from your live vocal, that vocal should be as clean as possible. No color change from the original, no reverb or other effects. If they are saying turn the EQ off on the Voiceworks I doubt that it is possible to make a blanket statement like that. Like anything else, you are going to make your mind up about what kind of setting sounds goood coming out of the unit which has all sorts of things like EQ, chorus, compression, reverb, delay etc.
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what patch sets work best with say a midi guitar track?


The patches are presets (there are about 100 of them) and they are really just examples or starting points for using the various harmony modes. The patches that use MIDI chords, which is what you say you are looking for, are grouped together on the patch list. There are just a handful of them. If you are using a sequencer you can do it through an instrument definition the same way that you pull up instrument banks/patches in a MIDI sequencer. I think I downloaded my instrument definition from Cakewalk’s site, so obviously that would be specific for use in SONAR.
I’ll emphasize something here. If I were putting chords in to trigger the Voiceworks, I’d be more inclined to put them in specifically for that purpose as opposed to snagging something that was part of the accompaniment. Not that the latter won’t work, it just sometimes those don’t present the best chords to trigger your harmonies.
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Some of the videos on YouTube show that the first set of patches are for actually playing the notes into for the harmony from a keyboard, I want to have a midi chord sequence track fire the harmonies any suggestions?


mmm…….this is going to sound like a wise a$$ comment, but its true even if I am cracking wise. Choose the patches that are meant to trigger the harmonies from chords. Again, remember, the patches that they are using in those YouTube videos are just Presets. You can punch them up on the unit or you can trigger them through an instrument definition. Or even better, you can use them for experimentation and to understand how it works, and build up your own preset to call up what sounds good to you.
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Any suggestions on how to get CC to start stop, and adjust the harmony inside a track of a song?


I use a MIDI sequencer (SONAR) and do a lot of the placement of the commands in the Piano Roll view.

A question you should have asked: What methods yield the most realistic and pleasing harmonies?

Once you spend some time with this harmonizer, and working with chords to generate harmonies, some of which you will like, and some of which will make you grind your teeth, you will look for other ways to trigger harmonies. Next up the food chain in terms of ease of use, is to use one of the modes that permit you to send a MIDI control message that tells the Voiceworks what the bass note of the chord is. As I recall, sending “0” is C, (it might be “1”) the next number up is C# and so on up the scale. Variations in the selection of the harmony mode will force a minor chord, 7th chord, Maj6, sus4 etc.

The most advanced mode is one that creates the harmony note for note. You input the MIDI notes, your virtual group sings them. All other input modes use a single MIDI channel, the note for note mode requires 4 consecutive MIDI channels to operate.

Keith
2025 Audiophile Windows 11 RYZEN THREADRIPPER 3960X 4.5GHZ 128 GB RAM 2 Nvidia RTX 3090s, Vegas,Acid,SoundForge,Izotope Production,Melodyne Studio,SONAR,3 Raven Mtis