Akai Debuts HV10 DecaBuddy Harmony Generator at NAMM

Jan 19, 2003

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Akai Professional has started shipping the HV-10 DecaBuddy, a rack-mount version of their DecaBuddy VST plug-in.

The DecaBuddy adds multi-part harmonies to your vocals. By adding 9 harmony parts to the original vocal, up to 10 voice harmonies can be played: 5 parts (Original + 4 transposed Harmonies) x 2 (Voice Doubler). Harmony can be selected using any one of the many Preset Scales, programmable User Scales or via MIDI. In addition to generating harmonies, pitch correction can be applied to the harmony parts and the Formant parameter can change female voices to male and vice versa. For a more natural performance, apply random pitch-shift and/or random delay to each harmony part independently. The DecaBuddy provides 50 banks, with each bank containing 2 Programs. All 100 programs can be edited, stored and/or overwritten in memory.

The HV-10 DecaBuddy features 7 operating modes that allow users to control the way harmonies are generated. Harmonies can be generated automatically by specifying preset intervals and/or via MIDI. Each mode is briefly described below:

STYLE mode: Allows users to set the harmony for each voice individually by setting the KEY parameter and choosing a preset STYLE (Unison, 3rd, 5th, etc.) to set the interval of the harmony part. The HV-10 offers 16 preset styles and 9 user-defined styles.

CHORD mode: Allows harmonies to be created by setting the KEY parameter and selecting one of the 50 preset CHORDS. Similar to STYLE mode, but does not require each voice to be edited independently. CHORDS can be edited and saved to create more complex harmonies.

FLEXICHORD mode: Generates harmonies based on real-time input of MIDI note values when 3 or more notes are received from an external MIDI controller or sequencer. Harmonies can be created in real-time by just playing the appropriate chord on a MIDI keyboard.

MONO CHN. mode: This mode allows harmony parts generated via MIDI note values to be received on separate MIDI channels, making it easy to control each harmony part from a separate sequencer track.

WAIT ALL mode: This mode is most useful for playing a fixed-part harmony accompaniment. When set to this mode the HV-10 waits until the number of keys pressed is equal to the number of active voices and then assigns the pitches to the voices in the lowest-first order. All voices are triggered simultaneously after all notes are received.

PRIORITY mode: This mode differs from WAIT ALL mode in that you can play as many voices as you like. The voices are assigned in a selectable priority order, i.e., the first note played is assigned to the voice in the front of the priority list, the second to the second, and so on.