TC-Helicon VoiceTone Harmony-M

The TC-Helicon VoiceTone Harmony-M is a vocal harmony pedal in a die-cast steel design¹. Where TC-Helicon's VoiceTone Harmony-G is built for guitar players, the Harmony-M is the keyboard player's counterpart in the VoiceTone line.

The pedal sits in TC-Helicon's wider family of vocal gear, which by 2011 had grown into the VoiceTone Singles line of one-button stompboxes, including the VoiceTone H1, C1, D1, E1, X1 and R1². The Harmony-M predates that line and takes a different approach: instead of a single stompbox effect, it is a harmony engine tied to a MIDI keyboard.

How the harmony follows your playing

The pedal includes classic "notes" and "chord" harmony control modes¹. In practice, that means it can either build harmony against the notes you play or follow the full chords coming over MIDI, so the two generated voices sit inside the harmony of the song rather than fighting it. Because the MIDI connection carries the chord information and nothing else, the keyboard's own audio path is untouched¹.

A tone switch engages what TC-Helicon calls its adaptive live engineer effects, which dynamically polish vocal tone¹. In other words, the same switch that brings in the harmony processing also brings a layer of automatic vocal treatment, the kind of correction and shaping TC-Helicon builds into its larger vocal processors.

Presets and performing with it

The Harmony-M carries ten presets with A/B settings, so you can arrange voicing and effects changes in your songs by stepping through the presets as you perform¹. Each preset holds a harmony arrangement, and the A/B setting gives you two variations of it to flip between within a song.

Connections

The back panel carries 1/4-inch TRS mic level I/O rather than the XLR connections TC-Helicon used on its later Singles pedals, whose spec sheets list XLR in, XLR out, 48V phantom power, true bypass and a standard 9V supply³⁴¹. The TRS mic level jacks match the pedal's intended home next to a keyboard rather than on a microphone pedalboard.

Where it came from

TC-Helicon announced the Harmony-M at Musikmesse 2008, alongside coverage of the guitar-controlled VoiceTone Harmony-G and the VoiceTone Create multi-effects pedal for singers¹. The company said the pedal would be available that June¹. MusicRadar's impression at launch was positive on the build:

MusicRadar, 2008¹

The same report closed with the verdict:

MusicRadar, 2008¹

How it differs from other TC-Helicon harmony pedals

The Harmony-M's keyboard control is what separates it from the rest of the family. The VoiceTone H1, announced in 2011, is a single-button stompbox for guitar-controlled vocal harmony, with eight pre-authored harmony voicings and high, low and high-plus-low voicings switched from the front panel²⁵. The C1 adds hard-tuned correction and inherits the chromatic and scale-based tuning technology from TC-Helicon's flagship VoiceLive processors⁴, while the D1 is a dedicated doubling pedal and the E1 a delay and echo pedal voiced for the human voice⁴.

TC-Helicon's Product Manager Tom Lang described the appeal of the smaller single pedals in 2011, and the sentiment applies to the harmony line as a whole²:

Tom Lang, TC-Helicon Product Manager, 2011²

The Harmony-M takes a different route to the same goal: instead of a stompbox reading a guitar, it is a MIDI-fed harmony box for the singer at the keys. For players comparing options today, TC-Helicon's later harmony pedals such as the Harmony Singer 2 and Boss's VE-2 Vocal Harmonist cover similar ground with different control schemes¹.

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