Help With Harmor

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Hi Everyone,

Sorry to bother everyone here with this question from a Noob, but I am trying to wrap my head around Harmor and need some help. I would post the question directly on IL's forum, but for some strange reason you are not allowed to post there unless you buy one of their products. So, if you have a question about a demo (like I do), I guess you're SOL . . . .

Anyway, I would like to import a vocal sample and "pluck," "bow" and "hammer" that sample. I am pretty sure that I can do that with Harmor - if I understand correctly, Harmor will resynthesize my .wav, and then I can apply inharmonic partials from another patch. How, exactly, would I do this, though? In other words, if I load one of the piano presets and then drag my sample to the image window, would that do the trick? If I had a sample of a sax, for example, can I drag that to Timbre 1 window, or do I really need just a one-cycle waveform? Do the one-cycle waveforms (such as the violin, guitar and other acoustic instrument waveforms from Adventure Kid) generally include inharmonic partials, as well? In the end, I guess, I want to be able to apply the "noise" partials from a sample (or a resynthesized version of a sample) to the harmonic partials from another sample (my voice sample in this case). From what I have read about Virsyn Poseidon this can be done with a particular filter. Is there an easy way to do this in Harmor?

Thanks in advance for your help!

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What you describe would be kinda hard to do, & would be done in an image editor.
if I load one of the piano presets and then drag my sample to the image window, would that do the trick?
Those piano presets aren't using samples, what looks like a sample is actually 8 single-cycles mapped to 8 octaves, it's not a sample at all, you can see the white line indicating which single-cycle each note is playing, & you can see the columns indicating pixel columns.
(in part B however, even though it's even shorter, it really is a resynthesized sample, a very short hammer noise)
DOLPH WILL PWNZ0R J00r LAWZ!!!!

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Thanks. What is really happening, then, if I drag my vocal sample to the image window in Part A? Is it replacing the existing 8 single cycles mapped to 8 octaves? What is the effect, if any, of dragging my vocal sample on the Timbre 1 and 2 waveforms? Do the Timbre waveforms get combined with the information from my sample to arrive at the waveform for the finished sound? If that is the case, do I need to find waveforms of acoustic instruments with inharmonic partials and drag them to the Timbre 1 and 2 sections, or do I drag that waveform to the image section?

In addition, is it possible in Harmor to somehow filter out the pure harmonics from complex waveform (such as one from an acoustic instrument like a sax or guitar), leaving just the partials to combine with another waveform (such as my vocal sample)? It is my understanding that this is what Virsyn Poseidon can do, but I may be wrong about that.

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Maybe the piano patch is not a good example. What about the string section patch in Harmor, which to my ears sounds like a pretty good approximation of a string sound. There is no file in the IMG window - does that mean that the entire sound is created from waveforms in the Timbre section that were originally taken from real string instruments? What would happen if I drag my vocal sample to the IMG window when the string section patch is loaded? Are the partials from my vocal sample combined with the partials from the string sample? Would this give my vocal sample the inharmonic partials from the string sample Timbre waveforms?

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Simply think of the image as many oscillators, stacked as columns, or a spectrogram along with a sub-freq plane. Combining stuff would be done in an image editor (but it's gonna sound amazing, and even resynthesizers that try to analyse specific properties of sounds to combine them, never sound really amazing)
DOLPH WILL PWNZ0R J00r LAWZ!!!!

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What about the string section patch in Harmor, which to my ears sounds like a pretty good approximation of a string sound. There is no file in the IMG window - does that mean that the entire sound is created from waveforms in the Timbre section that were originally taken from real string instruments? What would happen if I drag my vocal sample to the IMG window when the string section patch is loaded? Are the partials from my vocal sample combined with the partials from the string sample?

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There is no file in the IMG window - does that mean that the entire sound is created from waveforms in the Timbre section that were originally taken from real string instruments?
It means that it was well designed, not by "physical modelling" as the synth wasn't designed for strings specifically, so it means it's a good-sounding preset (probably made all by ear).
You can try loading your sample in it, it will apply the subfreq & multiply the amplitudes with the ones of the oscillator, might sound good.. or not.
DOLPH WILL PWNZ0R J00r LAWZ!!!!

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As a general matter, though, how do the waveforms in the Timbre section and the IMG section interact? If there is nothing in the IMG section, I assume that only the waveforms in the Timbre section are oscillating - is that correct? When you add in a waveform to the IMG section, what happens to the Timbre waveforms? Are they ignored? When you say the Timbre section "multiplies" the waveform in the IMG section, do you really mean that the individual partials in the Timbre waveform actually multiply those of the waveform in the IMG section?

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When you say the Timbre section "multiplies" the waveform in the IMG section, do you really mean that the individual partials in the Timbre waveform actually multiply those of the waveform in the IMG section?
their amplitude, yes
DOLPH WILL PWNZ0R J00r LAWZ!!!!

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What if one of the Timbre waveforms has partials that the IMG file does not? Do you hear these Timbre partials AND the multiplied partials that are common to both the Timbre waveform and the IMG file?

What happens if I drag a vocal sample wave file to the Timbre section, rather than the IMG window?

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They're multiplied, so outside the image=0.
What happens if you try?

Sample to a timbre is to import single-cycles (as written in the manual).
DOLPH WILL PWNZ0R J00r LAWZ!!!!

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Will Harmor only use a single cycle if I drag a sample with more than one cycle to the Timbre section?

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So if a partial in the Timbre wave is not in the IMG wave, it will not sound at all? If that is correct, do I understand correctly that partials common to both the Timbre wave and the IMG wave will be multiplied in amplitude (as in 3x3=9 or added as in 3+3=6?), partials in the IMG wave but not in the Timbre wave will sound at their original amplitude, and partials in the Timbre wave but not in the IMG wave will not sound at all?

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Will Harmor only use a single cycle if I drag a sample with more than one cycle to the Timbre section?
it will use the whole sample as if it was one single cycle, so it won't be useful

when you drag onto the GUI it detects if it's a single cycle or not.
Timbre wave and the IMG wave will be multiplied in amplitude (as in 3x3=9
obviously
DOLPH WILL PWNZ0R J00r LAWZ!!!!

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Nothing is obvious with Harmor . . . .

So partials common to both the Timbre wave and the IMG wave will be multiplied in amplitude, partials in the IMG wave but not in the Timbre wave will sound at their original amplitude, and partials in the Timbre wave but not in the IMG wave will not sound at all?

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