Six Voices. One Stage.
Sing one line and The Backups puts a sixties revue behind it: six singers who read your pitch, find the key and take their parts. The stage is the plugin. Everything you hear, you can see.
The Cast
Six singers, top line to bottom. Each one is a full harmony voice with their own part, and each one is drawn on stage: the lit ones are singing, the dim ones are sitting this one out.
Click a singer to give them notes
Click anyone on the stage and the rest of the room drops into the dark. They step into a spotlight with their own part sheet - and the others turn their heads toward them. Everything a real arranger would ask a backup singer for is on it:
Interval±24 semitones, snapped to your key in Key & Scale mode
Level · Panwhere they stand and how loud they sing
Detune±50 cents, for doubles that don't phase
Formant±6 semitones of throat, with a lock for all six
Delay0–80 ms of their own, so doublers land a hair late
The Showbill
Every preset is its own show with its own set, lighting, knobs and dividers. Pick one below and it goes up on the stage - this is the plugin's real pixel art, running live in your browser.
The Showbill dropdown
Click the preset name in the plugin and the showbill deals in: a still of every stage, tagged DOUBLER, CHOIR, OCTAVES and so on. Hover a card to preview its set on the main stage. Favourite one and it gets signed - a gold autograph across the still - and filed under SIGNED. Your own shows live under MINE.
Hit SAVE and you can print the show as a ticket stub, a 1080 × 1350 PNG of your stage, numbered, for the group chat.
The Green Room
Twelve harmony engines, hung in the order they were invented. Each one is voiced like the gear it studies, so switching engines changes the whole character of the group, not just the maths.
The Console
Eight knobs on a 1960s desk under the stage. Each show re-trims the console - champagne for the lounge, chrome for the disco, frosted silver for the holiday special - but the controls stay put.
The Strip
Six little pixel dioramas along the bottom of the plugin. They look like set dressing. They're not - every one of them is a control.
Key Detective
Backup singers need to know what key they're in. So the plugin works it out for them.
Set it to AUTO and it listens to your lead, names the key and shows you how sure it is. When your song changes key, it notices, tells you which bar, and asks: follow it, or stay? Or set it to MANUAL and call the key yourself.
Press LISTEN and play it a few bars - a vocal, a piano loop, a guitar, a sample. It hears the melody and the whole spectrum, names the key with a confidence, and stops by itself when the take ends. Tell it what it's hearing (voice / lead or instrument) and it's sharper still.
Want exact chords instead? Switch the harmony source to MIDI chord and play the voicing on a keyboard: hold the notes and the singers take them.
The Packs
Fifteen shows come with the plugin. These are four more troupes you can hire - each one a different room, a different job, ten shows that land in the Showbill under their own heading - and engines you can't get anywhere else, ten between the four of them. One key, and they're yours for good.
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