I have read all the post regarding the vocal effect used in hide and seek and have yet to pin point the exact digitech box that was used to create it.

Is this the unit? Vocalist Workstation | DigiTech Guitar Effects

Does anyone have any other proof that this was the unit used to create that effect. There are so many digitech vocal boxes so I am confused on which one it can be. I know the song came out in 2005 so the gear has to predate that.

Here is a live vid of her playing the song and could anyone identify the gear in the vid?
Imogen Heap "Hide and Seek" live on Indie 103 - YouTube

Thanks

Dave

In the vid: on Imogen's left it's an electrix pro repeater , in the right a tc nova system which has pitch fx.

Thanks for the gear id. Still no siting of the digitech.

Does anyone have any experience with the vocalist workstation?

I love this effect. I actually believe the box is very secondary in this specific case though. Many plugs and boxes can make very similar sounds, but Immi's magic happens with the chords that she plays in the background vocoding process. There are some special dissident chords, 4ths, even perfect 5ths that are brief and awesome. Ymmv, but for this effect to succeed, you need to study the chord progressions far more closely than the box. With this in mind I think you could achieve e very close proximity with Tim exile's The Mouth, who's her bandmate.

Imogen Heap is amazing

I've seen Imogen Heap's recording/live performance guy saying that they make heavy use of the TC Helicon Voice Pro and Voice One in interviews, primarily on Hide & Seek.

now i am even more confused. haha.

bumppppppppp

Here's an interesting article discussing Hide and Seek and Imogen's use of the Digitech Vocalist Workstation:

Imogen Heap and Artificial Harmony

I agree with hogo that the real magic behind this track is not so much the effect used but the way it is used - in particular the harmonies she creates. They are gloriously dissonant!

Imogen Heap Live Set Up - YouTube

from the horse's mouth

I didn't hear her mention what she uses for her voice effect. All she says is harmonizer in the vid. Did I miss something?

It’s definitely the TC Helicon Voice Live for the harmony. From left to right, on top of her keyboard, it’s the Electrix repeater looper (used in this same set for her ‘just for now’ live looping), then a giant mixer, then the box that Audslu’s comment said was a nova system isn’t right. It’s a Tc helicon voicelive (4 knobs are in middle not to the side).. this is a foot pedal which controls vocal effects. Tc helicon voice are famous for harmony boxes. The delay effect could be from this or maybe the looper if it has a setting, or mixer if it has prebuilt effects. But the midi harmonies are using chord input from her keyboard to build her harmonies, that’s a TC helicon thing. They made a smaller box later called the harmony M (for midi controllers) which does the same thing but it’s discontinued now. I’m pretty sure most of their helicon voice things will have similar feature, they’re just soo expensive.

Hello Dave,

I too have traveled down the rabbit hole; looking for the exact pedal / device used in the creation of the modern masterpiece ‘Hide and Seek’.

It took a while, but through some diligent research I came to learn the exact device you are looking for is called “vocalist workstation ex” it’s made by digitech. This is not to be confused with Digitech’s vocalist workstation, or their studio vocalist (the rack mount version).

Now in several interviews, not the one she gave to electronic musician….I believe it was in one of the extended version interviews she gave to Tom Cridland …where she discussed, in detail, the process of how it came about…specifically.

She set the vocalist workstation ex to 4 note polyphony and changed the tonality of the song from minor to major and the device selected the 4 notes it would play from the complete chords she was playing on the controller…and what came out that night after her computer died…was what we have come to love.

The initial recording, which was done on a mini disc with no midi out…she liked the notes it had picked so much, she had to listen back over the recording and learn how to play it that way by ear.
it took her a few weeks to go back through and learn the exact notes the device had chosen.

After learning these notes, she later ended up using devices like the TC helicon vocal live to generate the sounds activated by her Keytar….

You can see that uses several of her early videos. TP I switched over to the TC helicon she said had to do with the durability issues of the Digitech being used in a touring situation.

This same device was used on the vocals for Daft Punk’s digital love.

Brian Eno also used the studio vocalist ex version on lots of his tracks.

It’s kind of the secret weapon of quite a few people in the music and pro audio world. I purchased one. (It took me over a year to find…as the vocalist workstation ex version is much rarer than the prior digitech vocalist, workstation. You can tell the difference by the little green EX to the right…) and let me tell you…it’s a little piece of magic.

The intelligent harmony algorithms were coded by a company called IVL technologies. IVL worked with Digitech on serval models but it was this particular model, where they truly created something magical… shortly after releasing this model, IVL quit working with Digitech, and instead moved on to work with TC helicon…. The algorithms became more complex, and convoluted in my opinion… As I own a TC helicon as well.

I hope this helps,

Best wishes,

Badacatt

I love the fact that Imogen Heap bought a Nord Rack 3 for one of her tours because she thought the lighted rotary encoders would look cool on stage, especially as she is modulating parameters and the encoder lights move in tandem. Haha.

I really like all of her albums. But I especially like her collaboration with Guy Sigsworth on the Frou Frou album. It's a bit more straight ahead Pop.

A Digitech Vocalist Workstation EX (the exact model used in the writing and recording of ‘hide and seek’ , was just listed on Reverb.

My original response to Dave is included in the items description. It looks like we are famous :-)

In your journey down the rabbit hole, did you definitively determine that only the "Vocalist Workstation EX" is capable of the desired sound, or simply that that's the specific device that Imogen Heap used? Because it looks like the Studio Vocalist rack and the Vocalist Workstation share the same vocoder and harmony functions, with the main differences being stuff like the analog i/o. And I honestly can't tell how their respective EX versions differ at all? It seems like they must somehow, but I haven't found it.

Anyway, basically I'm just wondering if you know for sure that these other contemporaneous models from the same line definitely don't do the thing, or is it more that since you were able to learn the specific model she used and can't test them all to be sure, better safe than sorry? Thanks!

It's been a long search to find a reasonable priced Digitech Workstation EX. Last week the used gear deities smiled upon me and it arrived today. Having used a fair number of vocoders, both hardware and software, I can say this is the BEST vocoder I've ever used. The voice articulation is absolutely pristine; Every consonant is perfect.

I would think that all of them with the IVL logo use the same engine.

My Digitech Studio

Those are quite rare! I have a rackmount Vocalist II, the earlier version of the algo. It's a great halway between full on vocoder and non-realsitic harmonizer. No gender changing and only 32kHz SR (which is fine). It's a little bit noisy and glitchy, but not terribly so. I use it a lot, often in preference to Melodyne. The EX and Studio are 48kHz and have the gender changing thing (it's just formant shifting). Do you know of any other differences between EX and Studio models? I might just buy the EX since they are not rare.

So far, this is the only info I've found on what the EX offers: The "EX" stands for "Expanded!"
Now you can have flawless vocal harmonies on stage and in the studio with the new Vocalist Workstation EX! Featuring improvements like automatic doubling, automatic pitch correction, MIDI/Pitch-bend wheel, expanded special vocal effects, and a plug-in editor for Cakewalk Pro-Audio, this is one vocal event you won't want to miss. New easy-to-use programs 2-5 part natural sounding stereo vocal harmonies Hands-off automatic pitch correction Great-sounding programmable reverb Real-time faders for lead, harmony, and reberb levels Multiple non-MIDI and MIDI control modes Automation ready via Cakewalk Studioware panel Complete sysex control Microphone and line inputs

That blurb is from an old Sweetwater product page. I have both an EX Workstation Manual and EX Quick Start guide and neither offers any description about what the EX brings beyond the standard studio. The Studio Vocalist has all of the EX workstation presets plus another 50 presets ( but none of the extra 50 presets are vocoder oriented).

@ 3rdpath that is good to know. The older Vocalist II cannot track pitch to do autotune, seems the EX can do that?

Yes, I haven't done that but diving thru the manual it does seem you can control pitch either from the key/chord settings, from incoming MIDI info such as chords from a sequencer, and directly from a MIDI keyboard playing the notes that need to be corrected.

Oh the Vocalist II can do that. I meant track the input voice pitch. Like auto tune by Antares.

From what I can gather - not much is different. The non-EX has double memory slots for presets, but EX seems to be newer, and maybe running on a newer firmware?

I compared each of their manuals and most of it is the same word for word - the EX version has some sections added, but it seems to be for clarification only, and seem to apply to the non-EX also.

This is a question I really wanted to know the answer to. From an interview, it sounds like Imogen Heap used a DigiTech Vocalist Workstation (not sure if it was an EX or not) for her demo and studio recording. The way she talks about it sounds like it’s a small desktop model, not a rack unit.

I have purchased these models, to test:

• 1996 - DigiTech Vocalist Workstation (currently broken)
• 2000 - DigiTech Vocalist VR
• 2001 - DigiTech Vocalist Workstation EX
• 2009 - DigiTech Vocalist VL3D

I suspect the “vocoder”/“MIDI notes mode” is the same on all, but it’ll be fun to test. The vocoder isn’t a vocoder at all, so I’m not sure why they named it like that (it’s a harmoniser/pitch corrector). Later models use “MIDI notes mode” as the name for the feature instead.

All were created as a partnership between DigiTech and IVL. I’m hoping to write this all up, as it relates to some of Daft Punk’s vocal effects as well (Digital Love, Something About Us, One More Time).

Btw, if anyone has a DigiTech Vocalist Workstation manual PDF, that’s missing from my collection. I’d really like it!

I ended up getting a Vocalist Workstation (non EX) and it does the sound to my satisfaction, but I'd be interested in your findings since you have them all! I don't have a PDF of the manual, but I'm pretty sure mine came with a physical one, so I might try to do a quick comparison between that and the EX one that comes up on google, so I can let you know if it's very different... but this is usually the point in a forum thread where the person who says that is never heard from again, much to the frustration of future googlers. So odds are against me, but I'll try to break tradition, haha.

I am a big fan of her music. I think she and Guy Sigsworth use a lot of meoldyne these days.

Thanks! Any photos of the pages relating to the unit’s sample rate and bit depth, as well as the vocoder/MIDI notes mode pages would be hugely appreciated!

I’ve been working on this article for months now, and I definitely intend to finish my research and publish it. It’s going to require a few bit of audio work as well. Slowly getting there, but I want a definitive answer with null tests. I also may require the firmware for the Vocalist Workstation to revive it, or to find someone else selling a working one. They’re a pretty rare find these days though.

That's weird.

I was sure I pasted a link to her interview a year ago when I found this thread where she said what she used to put down the original harmony but apparently it doesn't show in this thread and was never posted.

Anyways, here she says she used a box that her friend landed her to lay down the rough ideas . It is believed to be a Digitech VHM5 which she specifically says it was originally recorded in major and later on in Minor chords.

She also said it was a TC Helion VoiceLive 2 for her Live performance.



This is just an excerpt of the whole interview but I remember her saying that she used a software Harmonizer/ whatever plugin ( maybe in a different interview ) to finalize the whole song. So while it is still unclear as to what exactly was the whole process of recording the whole song, she clearly state that what was originally recorded with the ''small dusty box that her friend landed her'' was not only using major chords but that she specify she used the breath recorded from that recording which lead me to believe that she most probably use the software I was talking about earlier in this paragraph.

If someone can find the full interview of the one I posted, If my memory serve me well, she get pretty specific before or after that part. Again, from the top of my head, I also think she never mentioned which specific software she used to lay down the harmony.

Scrap that, I just found the whole interview.