Making your own DSP harmonizer...

[ElectricMusician7]

...in stompbox form. Is that something which requires an enormous amount of work, experience and skill? Or is it something which can be done by anyone who's well informed and well motivated in a few months?

It's something I'd like to do, if possible. As I'd like a more flexable harmonizer than the ones you find on the market today. Like e.g. the Boss PS-6 which has you convined to certain preset intervals which you can't change. I mean what if you want phrygian dominant? Or Hungarian minor? You couldn't do it.

So therefore I'd like a programmable one, in stompbox form, using a C or C++ program in a DSP chip, with an LCD display, with the ability to make your own scales which you can then save to maybe 3 to 5 banks. It should be able to add two voices to your input signal and be a mono stompbox.

Would that be possible to do? Or is it a "one is bound to make a bad sounding one, if one pulls it off in the first place" kind of thing?

Thanks for reading.

[Mark Hammer]

Well, you could make yor own electric car, and telecommunications satellite too, if you were willing to commit the time, energy, and money.

I'm not trying to be facetious.  Is the appropriate technology out there for "regular folks" to buy and work with?  Yeah, but not in any canned package form.  There is one very steep learning curve to be accomplished before diving in.  And if you've climbed that cliff successfully, why the hell aren't you working for Digitech, Zoom, Line 6, or some similar company already?

So, short answer?  Save your time and energy for playing and just buy one.

[Taylor]

Well, it might not be quite as bad as Mark says.   At least you know to go digital - lately we had a bunch of threads where people wanted to make their own polyphonic, glitchless harmonizer, using analog techniques to make things "easier" on themselves!

IMO the simplest way to get into DSP if you have no experience with programming is the Spin FV-1. You could do this with that, though you'd have to get tricky with your control interface to have the features you want and fit the code into the program size limit.

Dumb pitch shifting, as in the Whammy, is dead simple in the FV-1. The core of the pitch shift algo is already done for you in the examples programs. You just need to adapt it to your interval needs.

Smart pitch shifting, without lots of glitching, is not at all simple, and frankly I don't think you'd be able to achieve remotely the same level of quality that's in the PS-6 in a few months - it did take Boss 20 something years, after all.

You would need to add a microcontroller to do the LCD and program saving stuff.

Basically, you can make something equivalent to a Whammy - but with your own chosen intervals - pretty easily. But to make something which does intelligent harmonizing as well as a later boss unit would be very advanced indeed.

[Mark Hammer]

That's a much nicer and more encouraging answer than my own.  Much appreciated.

I guess the obvious question to ask before providing too much encouragement or discouragement is: What are your chops presently like?  What sorts of things do you already have some degree of skill in?

[Taylor]

That's a much nicer and more encouraging answer than my own.  Much appreciated.

Well, it's actually quite helpful to be discouraging sometimes. 

http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=88353.0

Since the OP mentions programming languages, I assumed he had done at least some research, if not having already done some programming.

[ElectricMusician7]

First off, thanks for the interesting and considered replies.

And yes, I do have some experience with programming. I had it in school but I never did anything with it afterwards and it's over a decade ago since I completed school. I also worked with an IC for a school project back then. So I'm not a complete stranger to the material...but I'm not ultra experienced either.

Anyway, I don't have much time right now but I'll be back later with more questions concerning this thing.

Thanks again.

[ElectricMusician7]

Just thought I'd drop by to say that I'm still planning on creating this pedal. Once I set my mind on something, I'm like a dog with a bone! I've already got the pedal designed in terms of how I'd like to be able to operate it. So now I need to zoom in further on the innards...and get working on the specific design and subsequent creation of that. I mean sure, it's fairly complex material and there's a lot to it but I like delving into all of that stuff as it's really interesting. So I'm still going ahead and I'd love to make this pedal even if it takes me "forever" to do.

"Do or do not. There is no try."

- Yoda