Top tip to do it live - in Logic, you load Harmony engine as a "Midi Controllable Effect". In Harmony Engine, you then set the sidechain input as the actual input number that the live microphone is plugged into (i.e. Input 1). Enable record on the harmony engine channel - play midi keys and sing and you have a latency free, live setup. Enjoy : )

So I was expecting a relatively similar tone/quality to bon iver when I opened this video, but I wasn't expecting THAT close of a result. Gotta give it to my man.This sounds incredibly close to the original.

Hide and Seek hit me SO hard the first time I heard it. Walking on a dark beach under the moonlight, high as a 🪁

I found this... Of all the crazy effects on 22, A Million, perhaps the most prominent is a device created by and named after engineer Chris Messina. There have been reports that The Messina is based on the Prismizer, which is software designed by Francis Starlite (of Francis & The Lights). However, according to Justin Vernon and Messina, the Prismizer was only an inspiration and does not use the same technology. “When Francis Starlite was staying at my house for a year,” recalled Vernon, “I saw him take a trumpet line and make it sound like a bunch of them. I was like: ‘That is amazing, that is really cool.’ So when I talked with Chris Messina, my confidant in this entire recording process, about setting up new toys and finding new zones and not trying to get stuck in any technological toilet bowl, I was like, ‘How can you do that live?’ One of the reasons why you can’t do that is because CPUs don’t really have that capacity to do it as it is happening. So Chris figured that out, and got all the gear to make that work, and I said: ‘We are calling this the Messina.’ We used it on a lot of stuff, and we actually use it a lot live as well now.” Messina elaborates on how he devised the Messina. “Inspired by what Francis did, Justin and I got together and we tried every single vocoder that was listed, but they all sounded like a vocoder, which was not exactly what we wanted. Instead we wanted to be able to keep the character of whatever input signal we used, whether a voice or a saxophone. So instead we developed this thing which basically is a glorified vocoder. The input signal goes into Ableton Live where it is treated by two Auto-Tune plug-ins. The first just tunes the vocal, in the way Justin has always done it, and the second plug-in creates just a single note, the tonic of the key of the phrase that is sung or played, and that then is sent to an Eventide H8000, which is set to a MIDI harmony program. “Justin can play the white keys of a MIDI keyboard at the same time, and the H8000 receives the Auto-Tune tonic input, sometimes a dry input, and the input of the MIDI keyboard, and the H8000 generates up to four notes based on what’s played. It involves a degree of randomisation, so you don’t know exactly what you’re going to get. We’d then use a combination of the dry signal, tuned signal, tonic signal and the harmony created by the H8000 to make the ‘Messina’ sound. A lot of the distortion on the album comes from this, because the H8000 program naturally creates a lot of artifacts. When you’re switching keys on the MIDI keyboard it automatically creates this kind of clicking noises as it’s changing whatever harmonies it’s creating. We removed some of those clicking noises, but as also left many in, because we liked them. But a lot of the distortion is Justin and the Messina, with the H8000 doing what it does to the signal. You can hear Justin on his own with the Messina in ‘715’. That song is mostly just one take, though we did do a few additional takes, hitting the 8000 differently each time, cranking up the output to hit it harder. The way the 8000 reacts to different input signals can be pretty cool.”

Halfway through a hyperpop album and realised i had harmony engine from a couple years ago. This video has unlocked so much for me, youre the best, great rendition too

I appreciate all u do for us rising musicians, thanks for existing bro.

BRO THAT BEGINNING GAVE ME CHILLSSSSs

Ethan!! Wow, I've been trying to duplicate this sound for quite a while. Genius brother, you are amazing! Thank you, you just skyrocketed me into the future. Bless you brother

Ethan, you are an expert teacher, communicator, and entertainer. Your video is excellent and most enjoyable, and I learned a lot.

My favorite Vocoder is Razor by NI. You have all the power of Razor's oscillator section and it's excellent reverbs. The vocoder is a filter "type" but since razor has 2 filter you are still left with a filter as well. It's extremely digital and pure - not an analog simulation if that's what you are going for. But that purity gives gorgeous harmonics and intelligibility.

Well if you want exactly how it’s routed that came straight from Messina, and to try it yourself, here you go. He’s using ableton live. He has 2 auto tune. 1 is on his main vocal that he does with ALL his songs live (lightly) then he has a second auto tune that’s literally only sending the root note to the harmonized chain. Since it’s in the key of C#, it would be Ab. Then he has the eventide rack that already gives him real time pitch shift/stretched harmonies. It’s something that’s really fun to play around with.

you are a legend Ethan, thank you so much for this tutorial

I think Bon Iver and James Blake also used it in 2011 in Fall Creek Boys Choir, I used to listen to that song a lot. James does it a lot too.

Currently working on building my own harmonizer in patcher. It's gonna be three octaves (Midi is C4-B6, but the actual pitch adjusts based on what octave the input vocal is), as many notes as you want. gonna be a good bit of work but i'm excited to see how it turns out, sounds pretty good rn with one octave.

@4:26 jacob collier uses hardware for live chorus performance. I read about it in a thesis about live music. I didnt remember which hardware exactly, though sorry. I personally use a Roland VT-4 which is quite good (can be used with midi input :) I absolutely hate latency and i wish there will be a technological Revolution someday, enabling FX VSTs to have 0 latency. OVOX (WAVES) and Manipulator are also awesome voice plugins.

The beginning is soo beautiful!

MY GOD, AN INTRO NOT WORTH SKIPPING

Thank-you very much! I was fiddling with Antares' "Articulator," thinking that was a cool vocoder sound, but THIS is definitely more like it!

you are simply the best content creator for people creating and produicng music. your videos help me so much i think if ill have future in this industry its driectly because of you

I'm inspired by the video and impressed by the video editing. I can tell you really care. Can't wait to see where this channel goes! Thanks Ethan!

Awesome. No nonsense tutorial and video, great. Thanks!!

plenty of outboard gear can replicate that effect real-time for live; TC Helicon has gear just for that. Great video

*Zynaptiq Orange Vocoder* is the best sounding vocoder plugin (the original and the more recent reissue) I've ever heard, but this one is a close second IMO!

🍀🍀🍀A very well done tutorial, respect! 🍻 Very well explained! So far I had at least six different vocoder VST's in the computer and at least heard a few more vocoders in tutorials, as hardware or plugins. But what convinced me the most today is the totally new version of ZYNAPTIC's Orange IV VST vocoder (I have the demo-Version in my computer). The speech intelligibility of the synthesized signal is absolutely top class. _That_ is vocoder to me. 🏆 The CPU load is unfortunately quite high, but in my experience you would still be able to cope well with the appropriate recording management.

Is it possible to do this in Logic Pro X as well? I followed the steps but I got stuck on routing the MIDI to the Vocoder track. It didn't see a way to do that with Logic's channel strip. Any help out there would be super appreciated.

Just a quick correction, but this is actually a harmonizer and not a vocoder. It can be done live because their are hardware versions of the harmonizer device (in fact - it originated as hardware, all the way back in 1975!) Final fun fact, Melodyne's amazing audio engine is based on the same pitch-shfting algorithm harmonizers use (which is very different from AutoTune). Whereas AutoTune compresses or stretches the entire waveform, the harmonizer algorithm applies an offset to specially-calculated 3rd order harmonics of the input signal's fundamental frequency. This has the effect of changing the pitch of a voice, but leaving timbre intact, allowing the vocal signal to retain its natural tone rather than Chipmunking or Darth Vadering the vocal as other pitch correction softwares do

I believe they do this song live by using a custom invented machine called the "Messinator" (invented by Justin's friend Chris Messina) and it adds the effect in real time with no latency

I read somewhere that the second track used to generate the harmonies was also hard tuned to one note before it hits the harmony machine, that’s how sone of the weirder artefacts were created on the track. Great video! Defo gonna give this a go!

It may have just lost it's crown Hello Zynaptiq Orange Vocoder. You are a thing of wonder 😻

Okay so ive done vocoding live in my high school back in 2018 - 2019 i was able to do it without latency is by switching the buffer length from 2048 to 256 i did this using fl studio for a small portion of a song if you will like an example ill be happy to send one

BRO YOU A GIFT FROM GOD

Hey Man, I done a cover of Creeks a long time ago, I recorded it live so I figured out how to use it live in Realtime without any latency ( On a 2014 Mac mini ) if you want any tips i'm happy to help!

All of your videos are great and love them. Thank you master.

This is awesome! It sounds great. I want to figure out how to do this live.

Just discovered your channel, and very much enjoyed this video. Also happened to see that your next one is about Logic. I’ve been using MainStage with the built in vocoder (that comes with Logic) for real time and it’s basically latency free so far.

Hah that's too funny. That's the song that made me search out a how to video. Happened to be the first video I clicked. Cheers

Waves Harmony has been released since and I think it sounds better, AND its much less expensive than Antares. Like someone else mentioned, its a harmonizer, not a vocoder.

Just getting into using vocoders and this was one of the first videos that came up and it's great, thank you! One thing... you said it's hard to recreate "live", but at the beginning, you're singing "live" with it... are you just singing over a pre made song then?

I love this!! So fire🔥

anyone know how to do this on fl?

Thank you 🙏 by now you probably learned about waves harmony to perform live cheers 🍻

Hey Ethan, I would love to see the overal proces of the John balaya - dream vocal comp. I'd assume that you've used waves tune probably for the tuning of the vocal. Maybe some melodyne to fine tune certain notes maybe but the extra harmonies and recording everything is something I'd like to see. Feel free to let me know how you did it or make a new tutorial for it 🙂

Good stuff bro

just the vid i needed THANK YOU

Emotional wonders!

How do I play in realtime?! im finding this impossible - like playing keys while singing and it harmonises the notes that I play. ( like you were doing in the start of the vide ) Thanks!

amazing video!

This video slaps...

I think Gigperformer can be a solution for the latency issue performing with it live

Eventide rackmount is how he gets around latency in short.

how would you do this in Logic Pro?

Does this work in logic?

Thanks thanks, damn I really wish i can get this working. What version of Ableton/Computer are you using? I can't get the Harmony Engine to show up as a target of my Midi track, It's missing =| I'm on a M1, Ableton 11

Hi Ethan. Absolute great you describe this video to imitate the Bon Iver effect. But I have big problems to make it work in Reason 12. I have made vocal track and dublicate it. Then I put the Antares Vocal Hamonizer (4.3.0)on it as an effect. Then I can't just make an MIDI/software track as you do in your DAW. I can't make a clean MIDI track, but have to choose track with a specific plugin ( For ex. Spire), thats can create a MIDI track (so here I can make some MIDI chords), but here my experiment stop. Mayby it has something to about some Sidechain in Reaon 12 setup? I have just bought the Antares Vocal Hamonizer on sale, so will be gratefull to make it work like you descibe 🙂

THANK YOU

My harmony engine would crash Ableton when I used my MacBook Pro and now that I use a Mac Studio there is no difference, it still crashes. Same goes for EFX using AU or VST3

He “hard auto tuned it” with Waves, but harmony engine has AT built in!

Can somebody help me please? when I connect the Midi to the Vocoder I can`t click on 1. Harmony engine. It`s just grey and it says "track in" where can I change that? Great Video so far :)

Hey thanks for the great tutorial. I can get audio out of harmony engine. I routed the midi to harmony engine and then pressed omni like you did. However, once I turn the volume down I get no audio from the other 4 channels. Any thoughts on how I can fix this?

Fantasic video. Are you playing everything live in the opening clip?

the midi output for mine worked at one point now when I click the “master” button to the audio track then that little tab under that… it should you select harmony engine but it only says “track input” Any ideas?

Thank you

Thanks so much! Would this work in GarageBand?

Thanks

Is there an analog alternative for people without a computer and software?

The live instrument is probably one of the TC Helion pedals. I think those have or had antares tech inside. Imogen Heap used one of those.

THANKS

I love this effect bon iver is my favorite artist I have this plugin , I am an engineer artist and producer but I’m not good with midi . Would someone be able to help me with the midi part ?

Great video, any tips on how I can do this without any experience knowing chords? Thanks

Thx a bunch brother, I just bought it. Question: why put auto tune on it though?

Could you upload the bon iver creeks midi file for the vocal tracking?

Does waves harmony have this capability? Not sure the diff between those two plugins.

How do you create the midi track off of a 2 track instrumental you’ve loaded into your daw

How do your harmonies sustain so well? I keep getting some gaps from changing keys?

Thank you . Been trying to use the OVOX this seems better . Is it?

thank U

Does this come with the subscription ?

OMG

where are u getting the midi from?that’s a vocal midi or you played it on keys ?

hi, how did you create the midi of the vocal? did you use a vst?

Can you this live? With you singin and playing the keys like a real piano?

how di you use this in fl studio

how can i do this on fl studio

what´s the name of the song from bon iver?

Man at $300, that’s wild. Any other alternatives you know about?

haha "this plugin is freakin siiiiiiiiick"

can u use w/o piano midi or can you use w maschine chord mode?

Hi, please tell me where you bought it for $125..... I'm seeing 279 Euros. Would appreciate any info, Thx.

So if I need to make a song that’s in c minor which minor one am I supposed to click on real tune ?

That's called a harmonizer not a vocoder.

plot twist: Live they are using pre-recorded tracks

Do you need an external midi for this? Or is it all included in the VST?

How often does Antares go on sale?

Damn thank you Jake Paul from the future.

WTF the start is a near perfect recreation

Then enters Polyphia…

Is there a way to get this effect on Logic? I have harmony engine but not sure how to rout the MiDi track to the Harm track

It’s not a vocoder 🙂

The autotune is embarrassing.

What kind of sound were you using for the carrier / midi going into harmony engine?