Harmony Box -- Do atheists get prayers answered?

On our cruise last week, I spent a bit of time watching a guy named Bruce play and sing in various places around the ship. He's from Memphis, and played the same kind of stuff that I do, though a lot more of it since he has to fill lots of time on those cruises. It's always interesting to see other "takes" on the songs I do, and to hear other songs that I might want to add.

Oddly, he played 12-string guitar, only. That's kind of rare. He also had more electronics than I do. One box was a "looper", where he could stomp a button to have it start recording the guitar chord "track" as he played and sang, say, the second verse of a song, and then he could play lead guitar over that track's playback as a third verse. He also had an effect pedal to give him some distortion or whatever to make the lead stand out. But the third box was the most fascinating.

I noticed that he had occasional vocal harmony backup, but there weren't any other people up there. It's possible to sing to a tape, but *really* hard to get the timing right and match the speed. I ran into him taking a break in one of the lounges late at night, and asked him how he got those harmonies. It's that third box -- an electronic harmonizer that duplicates your voice, modified (up or down) to a harmony note, based on the guitar chords that you're playing. This is, of course, genius, amazing, and I had no idea that such a thing existed, but there it was, turning only-child Bruce into the Everly Brothers.

It's also the answer to my main issue with my performances -- no vocal harmony. But even if I found someone that could/would sing with me, I'd have to make time to rehearse with him, and I couldn't learn new songs with abandon the way I currently do. This robot harmonizer will learn as fast as I do, know all the songs I already know (making the same mistakes I make), not be bored on songs that don't have/need any harmony, not complicate the gig scheduling, and no rehearsals required.

When I got to play "with" Bruce, he apparently had wired me through it, and reached over and kicked it on during the chorus of "Let It Be". Wow. Seems to work. Needs a lot more investigation of course, but, wow.

As soon as we got home, I looked it up, found one on eBay, and bought it. It's on its way, but it looks like it won't quite get here in time for Saturday's gig. But next week, look out.