Digitech debuts the HarmonyMan Intelligent Pitch Shifter guitar pedal

An extra band member, one who actually knows what parts to play? Who doesn't whine? And who doesn't even want a piece of tomorrow night's gig? DigiTech's new HarmonyMan Intelligent Pitch Shifter guitar pedal seems to good to be true.

The Harmony Man is designed to automatically generate live three-part guitar harmony over lead/solo playing by analyzing and remembering guitar chord progressions from before the solo. The idea is that players can simply perform songs as they know them, and then hit the harmony footswitch at the start of a solo to render multi-part guitar harmonies. The HarmonyMan employs the same patented musIQ technology as the DigiTech Vocalist family of products. This powerful technology accurately creates multi-part harmony by analyzing guitar chords. It also means no tedious programming or knowledge of complex music theory. The HarmonyMan offers a number of enhanced, convenient and intuitive features:

Intelligent Pitch Shifting, based on a groundbreaking new signal processing technology, giving players ultra clean, low-latency harmonies based on one of four user-friendly shifting modes.

Unique Key Display, showing the key that the HarmonyMan is currently using for harmonization. When musIQ is enabled, the display will update dynamically in response to the playing. A musically intelligent "Circle of Fifths" layout puts musically related keys (sharing the most notes) beside each other.

Independently Selectable Voicings for each harmony, with a wide variety of options, including two intelligent shifting modes, unison/detune, octave up/down, straight chromatic shifts from -12 to +12 semitones, as well as two octaves down.

Strum Key, allowing players to easily set the key of a song by simply strumming chords (perfect for songs that start with a solo).
musIQ Sidechain Input/Thru, which lets a second guitar be the chord recognition source while the Clean Input Guitar signal is shifted to produce harmonies (perfect for bands with both a lead and rhythm guitar player).

Voice Memory, allowing players to pre-configure and store up to four different harmony voicings and step through them with the memory advance footswitch.

Pre-Harmony Distortion Loop, which lets players place a distortion stompbox before the harmony effect without affecting chord recognition of the Clean Input signal.

Built-in guitar tuner.

Mix Control, programmable control of the mix between the lead and harmony signals.

1/4-inch guitar input with distortion send and return, 1/4-inch guitar optional Sidechain input and pass-through and guitar ground lift

Balanced stereo 1/4" outputs

Rugged roadworthy all-metal chassis

Power supply included

We just like the fact that they use the word "intelligent." The Digitech HarmonyMan retails for $449.99US. For more information, visit the official DigiTech website.