Tapko Harmony

Tapko Harmony does what a guitar-driven vocal harmony pedal does, right inside your iPad or iPhone. It turns your guitar chords into live vocal harmonies. Play and sing as you always do: the harmony follows every chord change, with no MIDI programming and no key to set.

It comes as two AUv3 plug-ins that work together in your favorite host (AUM, Loopy Pro, GarageBand and others):

• Tapko Harmony – Guitar listens to your guitar and recognizes the chords you play.
• Tapko Harmony – Voice listens to your voice and sings harmonies that fit those chords.

The two plug-ins find each other on their own. No cables, no routing, no setup.

TWO HARMONY VOICES

• Harmony 1 sings above you, always on a note of the current chord.
• Harmony 2 adds a second voice below you.
• Volume and pan for each harmony, so you can place them left and right around your lead.
• Dry + Harmony: keep your voice in the mix with the harmonies on top, or output only the harmonies to mix them on their own channel.

START FROM A PRESET

Five ready-made sounds in the Voice plug-in: Natural, Tight, Ballad, Choir and Pure. Pick one and play, or use it as a starting point for your own.

MADE FOR LIVE PLAYING

• Low latency, so the harmony lands with you, not after you.
• A natural-sounding pitch shifter that keeps the character of your own voice.
• Steady harmonies that stay put when your pitch wavers or you slide into a note.
• The song key is found automatically.
• Tuned down, or slightly off A = 440? The harmonies follow your guitar's own tuning.
• No guitar? Send chords over MIDI from a keyboard or your host instead.

SHAPE THE SOUND

The Advanced tab lets you fine-tune how the harmony feels: how closely it follows your pitch, how it glides between notes, vibrato and tone. Make it human adds the touches of a real backing singer: a slightly late entry, a small scoop into the first note, gentle drift, a doubled voice, and note changes shaped like a singer's, with bigger jumps taking a little longer. Every section folds away, so the main screen stays simple.

SAVES WITH YOUR SONGS

Every setting, Advanced ones included, is saved with your host project and in host presets, so each song comes back exactly as you left it.

BUILT WITH YOU

Tapko Harmony is a complete app, ready for the stage today. It is also actively developed, and its direction comes from the people who use it. The Support tab inside both plug-ins lets you:

• Send feedback in a few seconds. Describe what you heard, and the report includes the plug-in settings and a short technical log, so it can be traced and fixed. The screen shows exactly what is sent before you send it.
• See the roadmap: what is planned, what is being worked on and what has just shipped.
• Read the how-to for setup and quick fixes.

Updates refine chord recognition, harmony response and sound quality based on that feedback.

TYPICAL SETUP

1. Load Tapko Harmony – Guitar on your guitar channel.
2. Load Tapko Harmony – Voice on your vocal channel.
3. Play and sing. The harmony follows your chords.

GREAT FOR

• Solo singer-songwriters playing live.
• Duos and small acts who want a bigger vocal sound.
• Songwriters sketching harmony ideas.
• Anyone recording vocals on iPad or iPhone in an AUv3 host.

GOOD TO KNOW

• Real-time chord detection and harmony generation take real processing power. A recent iPad or iPhone gives the best live experience even though Tapko Harmony is very CPU efficient.
• Clean, direct guitar and vocal signals on separate inputs give the best results.

FROM TAPKO

Tapko Harmony joins Tapko, Tapko Komp and Pitchli on the App Store, and more Tapko plug-ins for live musicians are on the way.