Pitch change on the H910 was expressed as a ratio, where a setting of "2.0" is an octave up, ".5" is an octave down, and "1.0" is no pitch change. In contrast, Tony Agnello, the H910's creator and one of Eventide's earliest employees, used complicated arrays of off-the-shelf logic components to create a "largely analog device" that was able to shift pitch within a two-octave range. The Beach Boys - "She's Goin' Bald" (listen at about 0:51) One such device, the Eltro Information Rate Changer cost a staggering $3,950 USD in 1967 dollars (for reference, an LA-2A cost $395 at the time) and was utilized by The Beach Boys in "She's Goin' Bald." Stanley Kubrick also used it in 2001: A Space Odyssey to "wind down" HAL 9000's voice as Dave deactivates him. An alternative method utilized arrays of two or four tape-playback heads mounted on a cylinder that could rotate with or against tape passing over the heads, resulting in upward or downward pitch shifting. The simplest method was to play a tape back at a different speed from which it was recorded, a technique employed to great success by Ross Bagdasarian on his Chipmunks novelty records. Octave-down pedals relied on an op-amp comparator to "convert" the incoming signal into a square wave, whose frequency was then halved and/or quartered using CMOS flip-flops (like the 4013 chips found in the MXR Blue Box and Boss OC-2 pedals).Įarlier pitch-change techniques relied on tape manipulation. Octave-up effects pedals relied on full-wave diode rectification to "flip" the negative-going portion of a waveform up, crudely doubling the frequency of the incoming waveform.
Up to this point, analog pitch shift effects were largely limited to an octave up or two octaves down, and results bore little direct harmonic or tonal correlation to the original signal. Eventide also created moving map displays for aviation and a number of accessories and expansion products for Hewlett Packard computers, including RAM expansion boards priced to undercut HP's OEM offerings and an ethernet card. They also developed a tape counter for the Ampex MM1000 2" tape recorder-essentially an "autolocator," or remote control -which was so successful that Ampex made it an OEM product. A profanity delay lives between a broadcast studio and the air waves, allowing broadcast engineers time to catch and "bleep" obscenities before they hit the air-and before the broadcaster is hit with a fine from the FCC. It is worth noting that Eventide also had -and still has-its hands in a number of other markets, including profanity delays for broadcast. This article explores both the under-the-hood technology of the H3000 and the developments at Eventide that ultimately led to its creation, beginning with the truly groundbreaking H910.ġ979 Eventide Clock Works Harmonizer H910
And while vintage units can be had at reasonable cost, rest assured that most of the H3000's algorithms have been ported to software plugins. Whether in its original yellow-on-black cosmetics, the iconic gray-on-blue, or the later D/SE and "squiggle font" D/SX incarnations, the H3000 is immediately recognizable in the racks of the finest studios and producers around the world. The H3000 was, in its designers' own words, "a multi-effects monster," combining Eventide's standard-setting, pitch-shifting algorithms (now fully diatonic and stereo), along with delays, a comprehensive library of modulation effects, and powerful reverb algorithms-all in a modular, upgradeable package. Around the same time, Eventide released what would ultimately become a multi-effects staple, the H3000. The Yamaha SPX-90 and Lexicon's PCM 70, both released in 1985, successfully adapted algorithms from their flagship products into devices at a price point that placed high-quality reverbs, delays, and modulation effects within reach of musicians and smaller studios. The mid-to-late 1980s marked the beginning of what could undeniably be considered the golden age of digital multi-effects studio processors.