I'm So Excited About My New Toy

and no, she's not inflatable.... I bought a thing called a vocalist live 4. It's a real time intelligent harmonizer. I've had one before but it was too difficult for live use. this one is truly plug and play...point and click. It has a foot pedal. It will give you any combination of four voices in addition to your won in any combination of high or low octave, unison or 3rd, 5th, and 7th harmonies. It even allows you to pick gender of the voices so you can mix harmonies with male and female voices. It takes it cue from your guitar and intelligently delivers the correct harmonies, and it has a thirty second memory so if I was singing a song where a chord was hit and then I sang accapella for up to 30 seconds between chords it would continue to deliver the correct harmony. In other words I could perform "Seven Bridges Road " in perfect harmony alone with all 4 voices.

Now there are those who will say "Pretty soon you'll need no talent at all to go out and sing"...but that's not true. You still have to deliver the correct melody on key and in a pleasing tone and there is a learning curve, although it's incredibly user friendly, as with any electronic device. However, should I be on say my third night in a row, or be sick or tired and lacking the juice to be RIGHT ON key at every note on a given night....and this happens to ALL singers at some point....the voice after all can fall victim to overuse, strain or fatigue like any other muscle... it also has digital pitch correction up to almost a half step, and even has a processor that modifies the timbre of your voice... a very handy thing for people who do covers as i do. Think modifying Dennis De Young to sound like Greg Allman. Well, maybe not that radical...but a handy tool. You can preset an entire evening of performance and just turn it all on and off with a foot switch, then scroll to the next song.

It should come today. I demo'ed it at Sam Ash and was going to buy it...then found it 135.00 cheaper on ebay...still new and under warranty. I've got speakers and an amp set up in the living room and I feel like Ralphie waiting for his Little Orphan Annie decoder ring....