Korg IH

Korg have added a vocal harmony generator to their i‑series of intelligent arranger workstations, taking advantage of the same harmonising technology that's behind Digitech's market‑leading Vocalist series. Gordon Reid finds out whether the new unit has anything surprising up its sleeve...

Korg have broken all sorts of new ground in their time, producing weird little monosynths, ridiculously over‑endowed polysynths and, more recently, the most innovative series of workstations yet released. Occasionally they have turned their hands to other types of product, and recent forays into the field of guitar and keyboard effects units have been particularly successful.

Despite this, they have never before marketed a vocal harmoniser. I say 'marketed' because Korg did not develop the ih. That credit belongs to IVL Technologies, a company with a history of developing digital effects for other companies (see the IVL interview starting on page 178 of this issue). Perhaps best known for guitar processors, IVL are also responsible for the Digitech VHM5 Vocalist (reviewed SOS October 1991), Vocalist II, Studio Vocalist (reviewed August 1995), and MV5 MIDI Vocalist (reviewed July 1996), all units which, like the ih, offer a variety of vocal harmony generation facilities. So can we expect anything different from the ih, or is it a re‑packaging of an existing development within another manufacturer's box? We shall see...

Setting Up

The first thing you notice about the ih is that it's beautifully packaged — both in terms of the cardboard surrounding it, and in terms of the unit itself. Eschewing a conventional rackmount format, the ih is no more than 7 x 5 x 2 inches in size, and designed to sit on a flat surface, such as the top of a keyboard. Indeed, Korg state that the ih is "designed to be used with any i‑series workstation", although whether they let their own developers in on this is debatable: the ih will sit happily on an i1 or i2, and squeeze onto the edge of an i3, but as for the i4S and i5S — forget it: the speakers take up all the available surfaces.

Connecting the ih is straightforward: plug in the external power supply, a MIDI In cable, one or two quarter‑inch jack output cables for mono or stereo use, and you're ready to go. You'll also need a low‑impedance microphone with a balanced XLR output for the vocal input. Hang on a moment... where's the quarter‑inch jack input for unbalanced microphones and/or instruments? Why anybody should design a box without a quarter‑inch input is a complete mystery to me. After all, most live bands use unbalanced microphones, the cabling in a project studio is based almost entirely upon jack plugs, and the ih and i‑series end of the market is unlikely to be into expensive XLR‑based equipment. Since the ih only accepts signals through this XLR socket, I hereby award Korg the honour of the leaky welly.

Moving on, there's also an input for a 'mute' foot pedal. This duplicates the action of the top panel's 'mute' button by cancelling the generated harmonies without affecting the original signal. Finally, there's a MIDI Out (the ih broadcasts every front‑panel control change over MIDI) and MIDI Thru.

Control Zone

The ih has just 13 controls. Three of these are faders — marked 'Input', 'Lead', and 'Harmony' — which adjust the level of the input signal, the output volume of the original signal, and the volume of the generated harmonies. There is a dedicated 'clip' LED for the input level control. The other 10 buttons (with built‑in LED indicators) control all other aspects of the unit's operation. Six of these ('Bass', 'Unison', and two each of 'Above' and 'Below'), select the type of harmony the ih will generate. The others allow you to configure the unit and select the harmony mode desired.

Before starting, you'll need to enter 'Learn' mode. This allows you to select the MIDI channel to which the unit will respond, set whether the ih will respond to the whole keyboard or from zones above or below a split‑point, and define the power‑up defaults for the modes and voicings. Simultaneously pressing the Detune and Mute buttons accesses this mode, and the current harmony mode and voicings immediately become the defaults. You then press a note on any MIDI channel to tell the ih that that is the desired channel. In addition, you can press and hold the note you want as a split‑point, provided you press a second note to tell the ih whether you want it to respond to the region above or below that point. Unfortunately, the moment after you enter Learn mode to change the split, you realise that you've blitzed your defaults and replaced them with the current settings. Worse still, setting the MIDI channel from the front panel is tortuous, and setting the split‑point and zone from the front panel is impossible. While it saves money by eliminating cursor keys and a display, this is not a good system.

If you have any knowledge of the Digitech MV5 MIDI Vocalist, you'll have an intense sense of déjà‑vu by now, and with good reason. You press different buttons to enter Learn mode, and the Digitech doesn't store power‑up defaults, but otherwise everything is much the same.

Detune Mode

The first harmony mode is Detune mode, selected by pressing the 'Detune' button alone. This fattens vocals by generating voices with a slight pitch shift rather than by generating genuinely new notes. There are three sub‑modes:

• 'Light' takes the original vocal and adds two voices detuned by +/‑7 cents.
• 'Heavy' takes the original and adds two voices detuned by +/‑12 cents.
• 'Combined' adds all four of these simultaneously.

Again, this is identical to the Digitech, even to the extent that both the ih and the MIDI Vocalist also offer two extreme sub‑modes accessed via MIDI Controllers, though you can't select these from the front panel. Unfortunately, Korg have hidden this information deep within the MIDI implementation charts at the back of their manual.

Vocoder Mode

Next comes Vocoder mode, although it's not a true vocoder because you can't use an external signal as the 'carrier'. Nevertheless, you can create vocoded melodies and harmonies by playing up to four notes on a MIDI keyboard while singing into the microphone. Unfortunately, this is where the XLR input comes unstuck, because some of the best uses for a vocoder involve treating non‑vocal signals. Well, to be fair, you'll be alright if you've got a keyboard or module with balanced outputs (few and far between), but if you only own keyboards that offer unbalanced quarter‑inch outputs, you're out of luck.

Plus points (and again identical to the Digitech MIDI Vocalist) are the MIDI Controllers that allow you to select or cancel velocity sensitivity, transpose the vocoded signal by +/‑3 octaves, and auto‑transpose the vocoded signal to the pitches nearest the sung signal.

Chordal Mode

The last mode is Chordal mode. This is the one that takes the note information from a MIDI signal, derives recognisable chords (see box 'Harmonising Facilities') and then generates a suitable harmony when you sing into the microphone. The ih can't cope with every chord type, but it will make a 'best guess' if a cluster is not recognised, so unless you're into some very strange harmonies indeed, you'll not go too far wrong.

The ih will accept chords from most i‑series keyboards and modules, substituting the keyboard's backing sequences and arrangements for its own chord derivations.

The chords themselves are derived from the keyboard zone selected, and notes played outside this zone will not be recognised. Surprisingly, the 'lower' and 'upper' scanning modes are different from each other. 'Lower' will interpret single notes as root major chords, while dual notes will offer less basic chords. If no split point is set, or if you select the 'upper' mode and play above the split point, you must play at least three notes before the ih will attempt to recognise a chord. This can be very useful when you're using a single keyboard to play melodies, harmonies, accompaniments, and generate chordal information for the ih's backing vocals.

The six voicing buttons on the front panel allow you to select the global nature of the added harmonies. The boring one is 'Unison', which adds an unshifted voice for a straightforward doubling effect. Far more interesting are the four 'intelligent' voices: Close Above, Close Below, Mid Above, and Mid Below. These 'sing' the harmonies derived from the incoming MIDI information, tending to stay on the 3rd, 5th, and 7th intervals of the chord. Even intervals are rarer, but do occur.

The sixth button is 'Bass'. This generates a bass voice singing the root of the chord, and is very useful for generating inversions and harmonies where a chord resides over an unexpected root.

Having now run out of buttons, the ih again shows its MIDI Vocalist heritage, because you can enable a seventh chordal 'voice' over MIDI. This is 'Far Above', which adds a high treble harmony. Both Korg and Digitech have omitted this voice from the front panel, although at least Digitech have described its use in their manual. I only found it buried deep in Korg's MIDI implementation charts because I expected it to be there, and went looking for it.

Automation & The I‑Series

The ih has a few more tricks tucked away, the first of which is automation. The module broadcasts every panel adjustment from its MIDI Out, and these MIDI messages can be recorded by a sequencer. The MIDI data can, of course, be edited to create new effects that would be difficult to obtain from playing with the panel itself, and the most interesting of these is punching voices in and out of the mix at high speed. A real choir can do this, so why shouldn't you?

The ih's chordal harmonies are produced cleanly and with a minimum of glitching.

In addition, the ih will accept chords from most i‑series keyboards and modules, substituting the keyboard's backing sequences and arrangements for its own chord derivations. Finally, the ih responds to a number of MIDI Controller messages: #7 (Volume) increases and decreases the volume of the generated harmonies only; #1 (Modulation) overrides the default amount of vibrato; #64 (Damper) sustains the harmonies in Vocoder mode only; and Controllers 16 to 19 select mute on/off, vocoder mode, chordal mode, and detune mode respectively.

How Does It Sound?

In practice, the ih works well, with the generated voices panned left and right for a full stereo image, and a fixed pitch‑bend sensitivity of +/‑2 semitones which allows you to bend harmonies up or down to the desired pitches. Unfortunately, the voices are always clones of the original, whereas the 'Gender' function on Digitech's Studio Vocalist allows you to create a mix of male and female timbres for a far more interesting sound.

Judging each mode in turn, Detune works well, and there's very little else one can say about it. Less appealing is the Vocoder mode, not because it doesn't work well (it does) but because the sonically identical Digitech MV5 offers a balanced input, thus making it more useful by far. Still, if your objective is simple vocoding, the ih will do the job. The Chordal mode also works well, clearly showing its IVL heritage. I didn't have a Studio Vocalist or MIDI Vocalist at hand for immediate comparison, but even so, I could detect no significant differences between the units. The ih's chordal harmonies are produced cleanly, and with a minimum of glitching.

Conclusions

IVL's technology has made the company dominant in this area and is now marketed in several different forms — Digitech's MIDI Vocalist was just a cut‑down Studio Vocalist, and Korg's ih appears to be a cut‑down MIDI Vocalist. So let's look at what your money will buy you.

First take the £399 ih, and add back the scalic mode it lacks (see box 'The Missing Mode') and the quarter‑inch input. Also (and this is the single area in which the ih improves upon its rival) remove seven of the recognised chord types in the ih Chordal mode. That gives you the basis of the £449 MIDI Vocalist. Now add back the Gender function, 'Scoop' (which causes a generated harmony to slide up to the desired note), and delay. Next, restore two more modes — Pitch Correction and Chromatic Mode — a de‑esser, and a rumble filter. Finally, add back a full set of memories, styles, and song modes, which allow you to create, store and recall harmony styles and arrangements. Voilà! The £995 Studio Vocalist.

So where does that leave you? On one hand, and notwithstanding the extra chord types recognised, the ih has lost a lot of power and flexibility when compared to the MIDI Vocalist, which costs just £50 more (though the MIDI Vocalist was itself not great value for money when compared to its predecessor, the Vocalist II). On the other hand, the ih does, without fuss or frills, what it was designed to do. Notwithstanding the ghastly Learn mode, it's simple to use, and will generate satisfactory results for even the most challenged technophobe. Not least, the sound quality that makes the Digitech Vocalists so desirable hasn't been sacrificed, and no doubt this is what matters most.