Roland VT-12 Vocal Trainer

The Roland VT-12 vocal trainer is a wonderful tool to develop your singing voice. This handy device comes with a built-in tuner and metronome to aid pitch and timing, as well as 12 warm-up tracks and 186 exercise tracks to turn you into a seasoned veteran. You also have the ability to record tracks via the “Record In” mini jack, as well as evaluating your performance afterwards with the “Review” function. Also bundled in is Vocal Workouts for the Contemporary Singer by Anne Peckham from the Berklee College of Music, acting as a comprehensive guide for the unit, well laid out and easy to understand.

I tested the VT-12 with a pair of headphones using the in-built mic to see how well it detected pitch. The mic is very sensitive, showing all the little slides and vibratos surrounding notes you sing. Hitting the “Pitch” button starts you off with an A, and the “b” and “#” keys raise or lower pitch respectively. Hitting the “Metronome” button engages a click track that's either changed manually or tapped to a specific tempo. The warm-up exercises have you doing a whole bunch of fun things like buzzing noises and “ooh's” and “ahh's” over full backings with real instruments. What's especially cool is there's no compression on the voice so you can hear how the singing teacher projects and alters his/her voice to hit certain notes. Each exercise is followed by a backing track so you can practice without the teacher. After you've finishing singing, you can analyse your performance with the “Review” button as every exercise automatically records your vocals.

After you've warmed up it's time to get into real workouts. Workouts are divided into separate categories for voice type, vocal experience, harmony singing and the famous 50 Concone Opus 9 lessons for medium classical voice. The basic workouts for Low and High Voices are the same, except elevating to different pitches depending on voice type. The exercises have you performing different styles like Rock, Latin, Gospel, Jazz and minor scales, and are a lot of fun, making practice enjoyable and effective. Often you're just singing phrases, going up by half steps to work on extending your range, checking the note display to for key, or singing in harmony with the teacher, which is especially enjoyable. Advanced workouts are obviously a lot harder, featuring trills that are more intricate and runs, with wider steps between notes. Nevertheless, remember, practice makes perfect so don't be disappointed if you don't nail these straight off the bat. Harmony practice is so awesome, as voices are separated in each headphone, so you can isolate either the top or bottom harmony and learn how to pitch against another voice. Finally, there are the 50 Concone Opus 9 lessons for the medium voice. These exercises are even fun if you're not into classical music, and you can invent opera gibberish like me if your feeling a bit loose on a Friday night. These lessons are world-renowned and will undoubtedly call out to your inner “Bocelli”. The Roland VT-12 is a great tool for any sort of vocalist, and comes with a great book, and superb audio tracks.