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Chapter 8
Adding Harmonies in a Specific Key
(The Harmonist)
The GR-33 lets you use the TONE “TRANSPOSE” setting (p.
p. 51) to shift the pitch of the 1st and 2nd tones relative to the
guitar’s pitch, creating an always-parallel harmony.
However, to create harmonies that are more musically
useful, the differences in pitch between notes must follow the
key of the song and the scale being played.
The GR-33’s Harmonist function, also known as
“Harmonist,” creates harmonies in just this fashion. By
setting the key of the melody a patch plays, Harmonist can
create beautiful, appropriate harmonies by adding synth
sounds to guitar sounds, or to other synth sounds.
About the Harmonist
Let’s take a look at how Harmonist is put together, and
compare it with the Transpose function.
The sample score shown below compares the effects of the
Transpose function and Harmonist when playing the scale in
the key of C major.
fig.8-01
The difference in the results of the two methods is shown by
the arrows in the figure.
The harmonies produced by parallel transposition may
sound odd at times. The place on the scale where this
problem occurs depends on the key, whether the key is major
or minor, the interval between the main melodic line and the
harmony, and so on.
The GR-33’s Harmonist uses what it knows about the current
key—which is already set in the patch—to continuously
adjust the harmonic intervals between the guitar sound and
synth sound, or between the 1st and 2nd tones, creating
pleasing harmonies.
The GR-33’s Harmonist also fully supports chord play. This
means that complex chords can be created by playing a
simple three-note chord, greatly reducing the chances of
fingering mistakes during difficult performances.
What You Can Do with the Harmonist
Adding Synth Sounds to Guitar
Sounds
The commercially available device known as “Harmonist” is
a type of pitch shifter, and can only make guitar-sound
harmonies for guitar sounds.
In contrast, the GR-33 Synth Harmonist lets you take the
guitar sounds you normally use and make harmonies using
any sounds you like.
These can be put to practical use, such as adding a marimba
line to a clean guitar sound to produce a supporting
harmony, or adding a rock organ to a distorted guitar to
create a bluesy minor-key harmony.
And of course, you can always select a guitar tone on the GR-
33 to create pure guitar harmonies.
If you wish to create a harmony between your guitar’s sound
and the GR-33’s sounds, set the guitar/synth selector switch
on the GK-2A to “MIX.”
* To make all synth sounds contained in patches—from the 1st
and 2nd tones to the external MIDI sound generator—
harmonize with your guitar’s sound, follow the steps on p. 82
to set “HAR/ARP SELECT” to “Harmony All.”
Creating Harmonies with Two
Synth Sounds
You can make harmonies using only synth sounds, without
hearing the guitar, by setting the guitar/synth selector
switch on the GK-2A to “SYNTH.”
You can produce a richer sound by using two similar tones to
create harmony. It can also be quite effective to create
harmonies with totally different tones—such as sax and
muted trumpet—and select “CROSS TONES” with
COMMON “PAN MODE” to assign these to the left and
right stereo positions. You can also combine guitar sounds
with the main melodic synth line by setting the switch on the
GK-2A to “MIX.”
Transpose
Harmonist
Normal note
Normal note
Transposed note
Harmony note