
HARMONIZER [STILL EXPERIMENTAL !]
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Simple yet intuitive and effective, latency-free MIDI-driven harmonizer for voice lines.

By design, the harmonizer can only add pitched-down copies (up to 3) of the input signal to form chords.

For convenience, each of the three available voices is assigned to an individual output, for free external mixing/panning.

The input voice is NOT mixed to the outputs, it shall be mixed externally.


OPERATION LOGIC
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The number of harmonizing voices is fixed and shall be decided in advance on a per-content basis (max 3 voices).
This choice was mandatory, since the chord processor could not otherwise distinguish transitional states from final chords (MIDI chord notes cannot be played simultaneously).

The harmonizer does not adopt any unreliable (and latent) pitch detector; rather, the highest note played in a chord is always considered the melody (reference), and all further (lower) notes are computed relative to it, shifting-down the input voice by a same amount of semitones.

The nice side-effect is that you can play chords in *any tonality*, no matter which the key of the singing voice (the process can be defined "key-neutral").

For example, if the voice is singing an Ab note and you play a chord made of E, G and upper C (using Two voices), the resulting chord will be Ab+ (considering the input voice too, which shall be mixed externally), since C is seen as the melody, and two additional voices down-pitched by 5 and 8 semitones respectively are produced. If the voice is singing a G note and you play E and G (using One voice), the voice will be harmonized by one minor third below, and the very same would happen if you played A and upper C; if the voice is singing a Bb note and your chord is D, F, A and upper C (using Three voices), the result will be a C min7; and so on.

In short, all you have to do is playing the same harmonized melody the input voice is singing as you would do on a piano, keeping in mind that you can't add notes higher than the melody, that any tonality would lead to the same effect and that you shall always play chords of as many notes as the selected amount of voices plus one (the highest, i.e the melody).

Playing just one note or less than Voices +1 notes has therefore no effect and no harmonizing voice will be produced.

Chords of more notes than allowed will be ignored (not processed).

Considering the very purpose of this harmonizer, only Note On and Note Off events are supported. Neither pitch bending nor velocity are supported since irrelevant, because any modulation of either pitch or amplitude shall be naturally performed by the singing voice.


GATE MS
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This technical adjustment pin controls the ramp (envelope) speed for each voice when becoming active and inactive. Normally a value of 50 mS is optimal.



POWER SAVING
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Given the complexity of this module, power saving could not be supported.
Whenever the input signal becomes silent (static), normal audio and midi processing still occurs.
For this reason, the module is provided with a manual power switch, to be turned off when the effect is not needed.


WARNING
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Oversampling and polyphonic usages are forbidden since pointless; if you do, an error dialog will popup immediately.





