Harmony Wizard & Lyrics Track: Odd Artifact - Help!

[Randall Rothenberg]

I’m trying to use Harmony Wizard for creating vocal harmonies, and I’ve noticed an odd artifact I can use advice on. For the record, I’m trying to use Harmony Wizard with SynthV, but I don’t believe that’s material here.

I can easily export a SynthV vocal line as MIDI with lyrics attached, and reimport that MIDI line with lyrics back into Studio One Seven. But as soon as I try to harmonize that melody in Harmony Wizard, the lyrics disappear from the Lyrics Display at the bottom of the screen.

To be specific:
1. I select a note in the melody line I want to harmonize
2. I press CMD-A on my Mac to select the entire melody line.
3. In Harmony Wizard, I drop down to Harmonize Melody With/Chord Track/Below Melody.
4. As soon as I click, the chord notes appear in the track, and the lyrics disappear from the Lyrics Track.
5. The lyrics remain disappeared even if I go back to that melody line. If I press CMD-Z to undo the chord harmonization, the lyrics reappear.
6. The same behavior recurs no matter how I try to harmonize the line - e.g., if I try to harmonize the melody with a single line, instead of full chords, the lyrics disappear.

Anyone know why the lyrics disappear, and how I can stop that - or get them back?

 

[Randall Rothenberg]

FYI, I figured out a workaround. It’s a bit cumbersome, but it works:
1. First, make sure you save a “master melody & lyrics track” as a reference track in your project. If you’re working in SynthV, work out all the articulations and lyrics and whatever, and then export that as a midi track, and reimport it as the reference track in your Studio One project.
2. Duplicate the reference track. Call it your “Master Harmony track” or some-such. Work out your Harmony Wizard harmonies here. For example, harmonize with chords from the chord track. Your lyrics will disappear, but don’t worry.
3. Isolate a voice line - for example, the 3rd-highest voice - and copy that to a new track (“Harmony 3”). Go back to your “master Melody & lyrics track”, and in the lyrics bar on the bottom, select-all and copy. Return to your new “Harmony 3” track and paste those lyrics.
4. Export Harmony 3 with lyrics as a midi file. Open a new vocal harmony, insert SynthV on it, and import the Harmony 3 midi into SynthV. It should be lined up perfectly.
5. Repeat for all other Harmony Wizard lines you want to isolate as vocal harmonies.

I’m not a scripter or macro designer, but I suspect a lot of this can be automated. And it would be easier if Harmony Wizard didn’t delete the lyrics. But I made this work, and it’s certainly better than retyping lyrics.

 

[Lukas]

I currently can't say why lyrics disappear when additional notes are inserted. Harmony Wizard does not explicitly delete lyrics, nor does it alter existing notes that have lyrics attached. It only adds new notes, which technically shouldn't affect lyrics at all. So this might be a bug in Studio One.

As for a workaround: I specifically designed the "Create Chords" macros to automatically select the added notes, making them easier to edit. If you apply the "Harmony Melody with..." commands/macros to an entire part (with no notes selected), only the newly added notes will be selected. You can then copy them (Cmd+C), undo the changes (Cmd+Z), and paste the notes back at the original position (Cmd+Shift+V). This will insert them on top of the existing notes without affecting the lyrics.

 

[Randall Rothenberg]

Weird! But it works!! Copying, then undoing, then pasting keeps the lyrics in place. So this definitely cuts out steps from my workaround. Thank you, Lukas! This adds enormous utility to Harmony Wizard - it really speeds up vocal harmonies, especially when using SynthV.

But I wonder why Studio One erases the lyrics in the first place???

 

[Lukas]

I’ll find out when I discuss it with the dev team.