Create Incredible Solo Vocals With Realivox Blue

When it comes to solo vocal libraries (and even choir libraries), you can typically place them along a spectrum of realism vs flexibility. The realistic vocal libraries give you incredible legato functionality and playability but with not much lyrical flexibility (for example, having access to both consonant and vowel sounds to form coherent words). On the other hand the flexible vocal libraries give you tools like syllable and word builders, but often trade off realism in the process.

Realivox Blue is a library by Realitone, and it definitely falls towards the flexibility end of the spectrum. However, it doesn’t necessarily trade off realism. True, it sometimes requires a fair amount of work to make a vocal line sound believable, and it does have technical limitations (which Realitone readily admit). Realivox Blue isn’t going to replace live vocalists anytime soon, but it gives us an incredible starting point to compose basic lyrical vocal lines that still sound realistic.

Interface

Upon downloading and running the library for the first time, I was very impressed at how well-organized and intuitive the interface was – I didn’t even need to look at the documentation or a walkthrough to get started.

The UI allows us to construct phrases syllable by syllable using a combination of starting consonants, connecting vowels and ending consonants. We’re also given some flexibility as to how we want each syllable to be sung, via two different legato modes – Vowel and Phrase. Vowel mode spreads the vowel across the notes you play, while Phrase mode moves to the next syllable every time you change note. There’s also a Poly mode, which simulates polyphonic legato. It sounds great when writing dense choir lines!

We can also switch between these three legato modes using keyswitches for ultimate control and playability, as well as assign certain phrases to specific keyswitches. The latter is useful for when a tune uses the same sequence of syllables multiple times.

Finally, Realivox Blue gives us options to simulate up to three singers at one time. Combined with the polyphonic legato mode, we can create some really nice-sounding, intimate choir arrangements.

Samples

Realitone went to great depths to get the library sounding as realistic as possible. Here’s one major example: when someone talks or sings, the sound of the consonants at the beginning of their words will vary depending on the vowel they’re leading into – for instance, consonants such as K and S will sound subtly different when they’re leading into an ‘Eee’ compared to if they’re leading into an ‘Ooo.’ To account for this, the folks at Realitone sampled multiple instances of these consonant sounds, but leading into a different vowel each time. Mike Green has a fantastic walkthrough over at the Realitone YouTube Channel which demonstrates this – I highly recommend you check that out.

The developers also recorded vibrato and non-vibrato samples, and assigns the crossfading of these to the modwheel (dynamics are shifted to expression, or CC#11), and the transitions sound very smooth. I’ve worked with some choir libraries that didn’t quite nail the vibrato/non-vibrato transitions, so this was a pleasant surprise.

Tech Specs

• FULL Version of Kontakt 5.2 or later. Realitone actually charges a little extra for a Kontakt Player version, but this is not available at the Audio Plugin Deals store.
• 95 GB available disk space
• Not too much RAM, thankfully

Also Check Out

https://youtu.be/goDHaTz62Fs – Mike Greene’s AMAZING Realivox Blue walkthrough

https://youtu.be/L-gxAEKdhh0 – Brian Freeland’s in-depth comparison of Realivox Ladies (Another Realitone library) & Sonuscore Lyrical Vocal Phrases