Eventide H910 Harmonizer

The Eventide H910 Harmonizer was an early digital effects unit released in 1975 by Eventide Clock works. It featured a pitch shifter, feedback and delay functions. The possibilities this device brought were exploited in the work of many famous artists by the likes of AC/DC, David Bowie, Queen and Frank Zappa (to name a few).

Peter Gabriel and the Eventide H910
Peter Gabriel appears to have adopted an Eventide H910 Harmonizer as early as around 1977. It is seen in this photo of Peter recording at home, as well as this photo from Peter's first solo tour. It was at the time a new device he was probably experimenting with for processing keyboard sounds.

The Harmonizer would soon be used a lot on Peter Gabriel's voice in a few of his subsequent solo efforts. This was likely influenced by Robert Fripp when he was producing "Scratch". He liked feeding Peter's voice through the Harmonizer to create a double-tracking effect, rather than sticking to Peter's natural voice. The vocals on the record have a stereo spectrum, while the Harmonizer is normally mono; thus the Harmonizer signal was probably recorded to a separate track on the multitrack (or patched into another channel in the console). And then it was blended in with the original voice in the mix but shafted at a slightly higher level. It produced a very dry-sounding 2D effect, which suited the overall cold feel of the album.

Peter himself later adopted this as his vocal sound on his next album Melt. Engineer Hugh Padgham remarked Peter even felt "naked" without the Harmonizer on his voice. On Security as well, David Lord always had the Harmonizer on Peter's voice while tracking vocals (at least for monitoring purposes). In the end most of the Harmonizer was ditched in the final mixes as Peter was becoming more comfortable with his natural voice. The Eventide remained in his studio racks at Ashcombe (and later Real World), although Peter later preferred the AMS for more subtle effects.

In terms of live use, the Eventide Harmonizer was part of Peter's stage rig on the Melt and Security tours.

Larry Fast also used the Harmonizer (one that belonged to the studio, and later his own) to treat his synthesizers on the Melt and Security album and tours for both albums - for instance, the detuning of synths on "Biko".

Phil Collins and Eventide H910
Engineer Hugh Padgham employed the Harmonizer for a subtle chorusing/delay effect on Phil Collins' voice during the early 1980s; mainly on his early solo efforts Face Value and Hello, I Must Be Going albums, coupled with an Allen & Heath Mini Limiter for attack. He later preferred using the AMS for Phil's voice, perhaps as it had less crude of a sound.