The boys are back harmony

  • Hi everyone,

    We want to play The Boys are back in Town (Thin Lizzy). But since I'm the only guitar playerin the band who can play the solo parts, I wonder if I can do that with a specific harmony setting in my profiler, in the way that I can achieve both tones.

    So I mean this:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0xlRRKDB1U

    Is this any way possible with just one guitar and still gettting a perfect harmony??

  • Try using a Chromatic Delay with the Double Tracker preset and adjust the milliseconds parameter for delays 1 and 2, and mess around with the Detune parameter. You'll get pretty close and good enough for live if you run Mains Out in stereo.

    Larry Mar @ Lonegun Studios. Neither one famous yet.

  • The issue you are going to have is that one guitar part stays in one spot and the other one moves up in a good part of that. You would need to find a way to adjust parameters for every one of those changes. You could do one with morph but then would have to change to a copy of the profile with different settings and a morph there and so on. If it was just thirds or fifths through the entire piece it would be much easier to reproduce with one guitar and a harmony device.

  • If that is the case you could do the outro with 4 profiles, each one set at the next harmony up along the scale but it would mean stepping on pedal 2,3 & 4 for the outro.


    From what I remember, the main melody moves up as well with the hearmony a major 3rd above? Am I wrong ?

  • You guys are over-thinking this. The audience is not going to expect one guitarists to perform the solo exactly as is on the album. They will fill that in themselves from memory as they sing and hum along. Isn't that what you do when listening to a cover band?


    If you want to cover nearly perfectly then either get another good guitarist or use a looper.

    Larry Mar @ Lonegun Studios. Neither one famous yet.

  • I disagree BT. think 'theplayer' is right in trying to cover both parts.


    You could play it with intervals but not easy. Also, intervals with distortion wouldn't have the clarity that the KPA harmoniser on single notes would have I would think.


    The audience will still like to hear the harmony, as on the original.


    Anyway, the guitar parts arent the hard thing on that track.....THE VOCAL IS ! :)

  • Wouldn't he need an intelligent harmonizer? So say we're in C: the harmonizer knows that when you play a C it should add a major 3rd and on a D a minor 3rd.

    Yep, that is another part of the complexity. I mentioned the one part moving up while the other stays put because that is the first big issue I saw. This issue would be the next one.

  • A diatonic harmonizer has been a must in every rig I've had for the last 25 years or so. Like many, Kemper lets you make custom scales that will play a note in the scale with whatever interval you want. I usually find the key and regular scales will do but I have used user scales when I couldn't get anything to match. This is another case where I dislike the way user scales are described in the manual and I have called out a few inconsistencies to which Kemper Co. blamed on the manual writers. This really confused me:

    Pg 226 "The default user scales are both blues scales - one major, and the other minor".

    Did they really mean to say one is below the tonic and one above? I did finally figure the answers out and wrote them down somewhere but I cannot recall right now. I believe the custom scales are saved within the rig, not in a preset like I had thought. basically the default user scale 1-2 are there as "placeholders" as you cannot erase the user scales, just change the data as they are always part of the preset. Someone on here took the time and made a Exel interval calculator for the Kemper that I have never needed to use but I think is super useful for those not familiar with scale harmonies and such and the slightly confusing way the harmonizer is setup. Search for it, it's here somewhere. I think the harmonizer tracks well and is very capable. I played Boys are back live with harmonizer once and it can for sure be done on the kemper, you'll just have to dig into the harmonizer. It's been a while since I messed with it but even though I am an experienced harmonizer user, It can take a bit to wrap your head around the user scale thing if needed. Normally I'll find a scale that works and go with it even if a note or two is not correct but harmonically correct, nobody notices. If it really bothered me and I couldn't nail the mode, I'd go user scale that way you can have any note play any note. Take a look at this thread read my post at the bottom and reply from Kemper. The Exel is here too:

    Easyer way to create user scales using Excel Macro

  • This is what I know about Tonics...

    Can you sing Do re me fa so la te do and count to 7? That's all you need really. Music theory is simple when explained by someone that isn't trying to make it hard. There's not much to chord stacking triads and modes. Do re ME. Do is the tonic (1) and ME is the third 3, add 5 so) and you have a triad. It's all just variations of 7 notes, and with scales usually in rock songs, it's not too tough as you don't get much into 13th and the like.

  • A diatonic harmonizer has been a must in every rig I've had for the last 25 years or so. Like many, Kemper lets you make custom scales that will play a note in the scale with whatever interval you want. I usually find the key and regular scales will do but I have used user scales when I couldn't get anything to match. This is another case where I dislike the way user scales are described in the manual and I have called out a few inconsistencies to which Kemper Co. blamed on the manual writers. This really confused me:

    Pg 226 "The default user scales are both blues scales - one major, and the other minor".

    Did they really mean to say one is below the tonic and one above? I did finally figure the answers out and wrote them down somewhere but I cannot recall right now. I believe the custom scales are saved within the rig, not in a preset like I had thought. basically the default user scale 1-2 are there as "placeholders" as you cannot erase the user scales, just change the data as they are always part of the preset. Someone on here took the time and made a Exel interval calculator for the Kemper that I have never needed to use but I think is super useful for those not familiar with scale harmonies and such and the slightly confusing way the harmonizer is setup. Search for it, it's here somewhere. I think the harmonizer tracks well and is very capable. I played Boys are back live with harmonizer once and it can for sure be done on the kemper, you'll just have to dig into the harmonizer. It's been a while since I messed with it but even though I am an experienced harmonizer user, It can take a bit to wrap your head around the user scale thing if needed. Normally I'll find a scale that works and go with it even if a note or two is not correct but harmonically correct, nobody notices. If it really bothered me and I couldn't nail the mode, I'd go user scale that way you can have any note play any note. Take a look at this thread read my post at the bottom and reply from Kemper. The Exel is here too:

    Easyer way to create user scales using Excel Macro

    Totally agree about the user scales thing. The way they are laid out and programmed in semi tone differences rather than note names or musical intervals is a real pain in the backside for me. I can work in semitone offsets but it’s much harder than just using intervals or note names.

  • If that is the case you could do the outro with 4 profiles, each one set at the next harmony up along the scale but it would mean stepping on pedal 2,3 & 4 for the outro.


    From what I remember, the main melody moves up as well with the hearmony a major 3rd above? Am I wrong ?

    As for the moving up part: you're right! I guess that makes it even more difficult, so I thinks it's not possible with just one guitar. And I'm also not a technical engineer in making the different and quite difficult harmony settings, mentioned by others...

    So it must be "solo by one"...

  • I'm going out on a limb here and say that the lead played as it is on the album is not possible with one guitar.


    I think that you could do a pretty decent version using the looper though. Don't try to match exactly what they did. Make something up that has the same vibe using the looper. That would be my thought. That way you could have more than 2 parts as well.

  • You can just play both parts too...


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  • OK, just created a User Scale for for the sustained harmonies in the interlude, before the main harmony riff renters. That one works easily enough. Obviously the part is simple enough to just play the harmonies but if you want the sound of two guitars using a harmoniser it can be done easily.


    It did require a little bit of lateral thinking though :S


    The solution is to play the first two notes of the upper harmony guitar and have the harmoniser fill in the lower notes. Then switch to playing the lower harmony part for the remainder of the phrase and have the harmoniser fill in the higher guitar part. This works really well. The only caveat is that if you use a wide stereo spread the harmony line swaps between the speakers at note 3 in the phrase. Just accept it (it sounds OK to me) or use Stereo 0% or at least a relatively low setting to minimise the impact.


    Here are the settings so far:


    Step 0 = 5

    Step 1 = N/A (I set to 0 but any value is fine as you don't play those notes at all)

    Step 2 = 5

    Step 3 = N/A

    Step 4 = -4

    Step 5 = N/A

    Step 6 = N/A

    Step 7 = -3

    Step 8 = N/A

    Step 9 = 3

    Step 10 = 6

    Step 11 = N/A


    Although it was easy to figure out the harmony notes required it took a bit of manual computation to convert to semi-tone offsets. It would have been so much easier and faster if the Kemper Harmoniser allowed input in note names an/or musical intervals instead of or as well as semi-tone offsets. It also doesn't appear possible to edit user scales in Rig Manager which makes inputting the scale a bit of a faff.  Burkhard hard please please please make these improvements happen :thumbup:


    I'll try and harmonise the rest of the line later.

  • You can just play both parts too...


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    This is just GREAT!! Thank you Finally!!:thumbup: A very good way to start with! I hope to learn this with real harmony fx too but that means a lot of understanding how that works and unfortunately for now I'm not ...

  • Hi Alan, You are truly a master in harmonising but I haven't a clue where to begin. Even you had lateral thinking how to do it.

    I do have the harmony notes of this solo (for playing them both on one guitar) but now it's my goal to have the harmoniser play the second part while I play the first part (or the other way around). I stil don't understand how this can be done.

    The solution is to play the first two notes of the upper harmony guitar and have the harmoniser fill in the lower notes.

    Yes, but how do you do that? How can you achieve those settings in the profiler with a harmoniser for each corresponding harmony tone with every tone you play during the whole solo??

    (BTW, some years ago I was in a band with another solo guitarist and we played this harmony solo together. That

    was no big deal and sounded awesome) But now it's a challenge to get this on my own.

    Ray