BLEASS Voices

Name: BLEASS Voices
Price: 69 USD
Author: BLEASS

by BLEASS · Pitch & Tuning · 12-voice harmonizer and doubler

Not rated yet

BLEASS Voices pitches, doubles and harmonizes vocals and other monophonic sources with up to 12 pitch-shifted voices.

It runs as a VST3, AU or AAX plugin on Windows and macOS for $69, with a separate iOS version.

Best for: Vocals, Sound Design. Genres: Pop, Electronic & EDM, R&B & Soul.

Keywords: vocals, sound design, wide, choir, tracking, drums, experimental, live performance, MIDI-controllable, MPE support, AAX, AUv3/iOS, backing vocals, bus processing, keys, low latency, synths, visual feedback.

What it does

BLEASS Voices is a vocal harmonizer and doubler that builds up to 12 pitch-shifted voices from one monophonic source. The developer pitches it as a way to "unleash your inner choir", and it leans as much towards sound design as towards natural backing vocals.

12 voices: each voice has its own pitch, formant, tone, width and placement. MusicRadar describes four voices set by interval plus eight more generated from MIDI notes.
Pitch range: each voice can be transposed up to 12 semitones up or down, and pitch detection works from about 66 Hz to 5.2 kHz.
Per-voice shaping: formant shift, delay, stereo spread, a band-pass filter and panning, with separate output busses per voice for processing in the DAW.
Key and scale: harmonies follow a chosen key and scale so intervals stay in tune; the scale choice is limited to major, minor and pentatonic.
MIDI and MPE: play harmonies from a keyboard, with mod wheel, velocity, key tracking and MPE pressure routed through a Performance tab, plus an ADSR and an arpeggiator for the MIDI voices.
Modulation: two LFOs, an envelope follower and a motion sequencer, with more than 65 modulation destinations.
Real Time mode: a low-latency processing mode for tracking and live use.

A full demo is available.

Source: BLEASS product page

When to use it

BLEASS Voices stacks up to 12 shapeable voices and adds synth-style modulation, a sequencer and an arpeggiator, so it can make wide doubles, choirs and moving, rhythmic vocal textures. That puts it between and beyond Waves Harmony, a MIDI-driven vocal harmonizer aimed at realistic backing parts, and Little AlterBoy, which changes the pitch and formant of a single voice. Reviewers found it less suited to subtle, natural double tracking, where its fine-tuning control is limited. Unlike Auto-Tune Pro 11 and Melodyne 5 editor, it is also not a pitch corrector. Its price is moderate for the range of things it does.

Best for: stacked harmonies, wide doubles, choir and vocoder-like effects, and experimental textures from vocals, drums or other monophonic sources.
Genres: pop, electronic, R&B and experimental music.
Look elsewhere if: you need natural pitch correction (Auto-Tune Pro 11 or Melodyne 5 editor), a single quick pitch and formant shift (Little AlterBoy), or very realistic MIDI backing vocals (Waves Harmony).
Tip: try it on drums and other instruments, not just vocals; Pluginoise found it works well as a sound-design tool on non-vocal sources.

What producers say

Reviewers like its range and design and see it as good value, but say it takes work to sound natural.

MusicRadar (Stuart Adams, 2023) praised the in-key harmonies, synth-style performance controls and separate voice outputs, and liked the balance of controls and visual feedback; it criticised the limited fine-tuning for double tracking and the basic scale options.
Pluginoise (2023) rated it 4.2 out of 5, calling it "a really good deal" and a many-plugins-in-one sound-design tool.
Criticisms: Pluginoise found it "overwhelming at first", the presets "definitely not exhaustive", and choirs not very natural without tweaking.

Where to buy

Tutorials and reviews

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