Recording - November 2014 - 60

RECORDING'S

SHOWCASE OF SOUNDS

Realitone Realivox Blue
By Gary Eskow

Blue has two pages (Wordbuilder and Settings) and is
straightforward to operate. Nonetheless, I had to spend
quite a bit of time playing with this product before I felt
that I understood it completely. The effort was worthwhile;
Blue is a highly enjoyable application. As Mike Greene
says in the instructional video he's posted on the Realitone
website, if you accept that you're not going to replace
Katy Perry, Blue may easily slide into your workflow. Let's
take a look under the hood.
The Wordbuilder
Blue is not the first vocal library to incorporate a
Wordbuilder. All of them require tradeoffs; recording
every syllable, particularly dipthongs, would be an almost
endless process, tortuous to a session singer. Concessions
have to be made. Blue was conceived to be used in film
and TV work and is designed to make it easy for the composer to create quasi-Latin sounding phrases. You know,
the kind that sound spiritual and highly evocative over
thundering Taiko drums and low strings?
Some English phrases are easy to create, others not so
much. The Wordbuilder process is simple, though. Choose a
Start Consonant, then a Vowel and an End Consonant, and
you're in business. You can also start with a vowel, but let's
follow the process I just outlined and create the word "bed"
by selecting the letter B as our starting consonant, the vowel
sound "eh" and the letter D as our end consonance. Easy,
right? I wish the singer was a bit more forceful on the final
consonant D-create the word dead (dehd) and you'll hear
the difference between D as an opening and end consonant-but that's OK. Now that you've got the hang of it,
you'd like to create the word "bad." Still simple? Not so simple. Mike Greene couldn't sample all of the diphthongs, and
the vowel sound contained in this word is not included.
Creating phrases is easy. You want to build the phrase "dead
in the water" but discover that the vowel sound that begins "in"
isn't available. Phooey! Okay, so we'll go with "dead end"
(dehd ehnd) instead. Note that although we live in the age of
tempo sync, this feature doesn't apply to Blue, which means
you'll have to be careful with how you place syllables in the
MIDI grid-and, to some extent, the tempos you choose.
I thought it would be fun to use Blue to play along with
"Happy," Pharrell Williams' Academy Award-winning
song from Despicable Me 2. A pair of sopranos back
Willliams, intoning the "ee" portion of the title word in the

Once upon a time, the universe of sample libraries was populated by a small number of players. The principals generally had large
pockets or access to backers who could spring for lengthy recording sessions in expensive studios. Sample libraries often featured
large ensembles, or at least well-known players who commanded
impressive fees. Your average musician with a good idea had a
hard time entering this arena.
All that has changed over the course of the last decade or so.
Recording techniques have been refined, experiments with bizarre
instruments and unusual mic techniques have yielded radically
appealing results, and a number of small companies have established individual identities and a place in the market.
One of them, Realitone, is the brain child of composer Mike
Greene. Based in LA, Mike owns a studio where he's recorded projects for a number of well-known artists, including David Bowie,
Vanessa Williams, and Cypress Hill. He also gets a fair amount of
work as a composer for television theme songs. Realivox Blue is his
second vocal sample library. The first, The Ladies,
was born out of a need he had as a composer. "I
Delivery: online download only, 2 GB
wanted a basic oohs and ahhs collection for backFormat: Virtual instrument for Native Instruments Kontakt 5 (full
ground vocals for songs I would write and produce.
version or free Kontakt Player); Windows 7/8 and Mac OS
I like recording lead vocals, but hate recording oohs
X 10.6+
and ahhs because it's so tedious." The Ladies is a
Copy Protection: digital watermark; Kontakt Player version
highly useful library-you might want to check out
requires online registration
some of the demos on the Realitone site if you have
Licensing: All sounds royalty-free for use in original
a similar need.
compositions, not for resale or use in derivative sound
Realivox Blue features a single, unnamed female
libraries
vocalist. Whoever she is, she's quite good, and-if you
Documentation: PDF manual available online and included with
believe the blue keys on the Kontakt keyboard that show
download
the pitches that were recorded-is the possessor of quite
Price: $149
a range (the F below middle C to the high C two octaves
More from: Realitone, www.realitone.com
above). I'd recommend that you stay away from the
upper quadrant of the extended range that's also included; it gets pretty piercing in the outer reaches!
60

RECORDING November 2014

http://www.realitone.com

Recording - November 2014

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