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How the **** Did I Miss This?


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I just got Realivox Blue, and I'm pretty blown away. I realize a lot of people will think "gimmick," but even the little bit of playing I've done with it shows that it's not so much about replacing a vocalist as creating a different type of vocalist. Wow.

 

[video:youtube]

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I scrolled through the video since I don't have 25 minutes, but generally seems quite impressive and functional, with some sounding harmonies or vocal bits sounding a bit more realistic or compelling than others.

 

I'm just not going to engage in the debate about real vs. fake and how this might be the last bastion of humanness that is mimicked by DAWs or any of that. It'll be the same argument that's we've all heard for over 40 years about synths, drum machines, amp modeling, AutoTune and whatever. It seems useful and is impressive. Nonetheless, I won't be purchasing it. I probably can't run it anyway because I'm running such an antiquated system, but no, I have a wife who can sing really well and know lots of singers, so I'm good. If I move to a remote part of Iceland and don't have access to a plethora of singers, then I'll look into this. After all, it does a pretty good Arabesque melody. :D

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It is amazing but I want a different singer and that's that.

 

In fact, I want a bunch of different singers. She sounds good but not my type I guess.

 

I don't hear her singing Summertime like Janis Joplin...

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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I didn't watch the whole video, but what I did hear didn't sound super different. I mean, the approach was really different, but I was kinda expecting to hear a greater variety of voices.
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per the guy at 10:46:

 

' if you are planning to do a lot of Katy Perry, this product is not for you '.

 

That nails it for me. My listeners are used to very strong vocal tracks, such

as Diana Ross, Chrissy Hynde, etc,, etc, pick your decade.

 

For my music production, I will stay with buying a license for a strong

recognizable vocal track.

Why fit in, when you were born to stand out ?

My Soundcloud with many originals:

[70's Songwriter]

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I started watching this video and after a few minutes thought, "this could be cool, but before I get GAS, how much is it?" I checked, saw it was $100 right now which put it in the Maybe column. Then I saw it was for Kontakt. I don't remember why I have a thing where I won't install that, but that clinched it for me. Oh well. It looks like fun.

"I'm so crazy, I don't know this is impossible! Hoo hoo!" - Daffy Duck

 

"The good news is that once you start piano you never have to worry about getting laid again. More time to practice!" - MOI

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I started watching this video and after a few minutes thought, "this could be cool, but before I get GAS, how much is it?" I checked, saw it was $100 right now which put it in the Maybe column. Then I saw it was for Kontakt. I don't remember why I have a thing where I won't install that, but that clinched it for me. Oh well. It looks like fun.

 

It loads into the free Kontakt Player, so you only need the program itself.

 

Don't think of Blue as replacing a vocalist, that's not the point at all - think of it as adding an instrument, like a keyboard with an extremely cool and unique preset. I love to sing and I have access to Jen and Amanda of the Nashville QTs, who've done vocals on previous albums of mine. But just as I worked hard to come up with convolution algorithms that sound like imaginary spaces instead of concert halls, being able to add this kind of texture as another instrument is incredible.

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I have a small personal barrier about going this deep with a vocal emulation, same as I don't use the patterns in Strum. Its too much like pressing Play and grinning as if just having the button made me cool. Your point about it being an added instrument is a balanced one, but yeah, it needs other vocalists. Her voice is so distinctively pure, it ironically limits its usefulness. Its in the same loose arena as the Synth Commandment against pretending to be a sax player. Of course, I'd also like to hear this used for "Watcher of the Skies." Its a real, in-tune Mellotron. :o

 "I want to be an intellectual, but I don't have the brainpower.
  The absent-mindedness, I've got that licked."
        ~ John Cleese

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Ah yes, the purist point of view. Not making fun David I get it but this is an awesome addition to a producers tool box. I could use it primarily for background stuff like his really cool soundtrack with the Arabic scale. That's all I've been wanting, something to add some vocal sprinkles to the ice cream and it looks like it might be useful for some jazz scat stuff too. The first thing I was thinking about as I watched the vid was I wanted more voices. Just checked the website and he has the Ladies. Five singers for $299, not bad. Check out this vid:

 

[video:youtube]

 

Hmmm, I've tried editing this three times now and it won't display the vid but the link is good. Wonder why, it's not the time stamp this time. [Edit: I fixed it, you need to grab the Share link from within YouTube itself, not something that's embedding YouTube. - Craig]

Hammond SK1, Mojo 61, Kurzweil PC3, Korg Pa3x, Roland FA06, Band in a Box, Real Band, Studio One, too much stuff...
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I have a small personal barrier about going this deep with a vocal emulation, same as I don't use the patterns in Strum. Its too much like pressing Play and grinning as if just having the button made me cool.

 

A much better analogy than Strum would be having a bunch of violin samples, and putting together a Bach solo violin partita using a MIDI piano roll editor. You don't just type words, you have to string together phonemes, and the process isn't obvious - for example, there's no "ay" sound, you have to composite it from other phonemes. You have to use keyswitching, vary timing of some MIDI notes for words to sound "right," evaluate how to handle legato, and decide whether the next note is a continuation of a previous sound or the start of a new one. If you just "press play," you will not look cool. You'll look like you haven't read the manual :)

 

Her voice is so distinctively pure, it ironically limits its usefulness.

 

To be fair, most people have voices that limit their usefulness. For example, I could never have pictured Joe Cocker singing opera. Blue is kind of like a CGI version of a lot of the vocals done in EDM. As such, it's a useful complement to a human vocalist, and ideal for backgrounds and textures. You can easily flip it around, and say no human can sound quite like Blue, but that doesn't limit the human's usefulness.

 

Remember, I'm someone who won't do sax patches because I think it's a lost cause to try and reproduce those nuances. But that doesn't stop me from layering sax samples with a Matrix-12 horn section patch. My first experiment was layering Blue with a sampled choir to make the samples sound more angelic and ethereal, and it worked perfectly. It didn't sound like a "sampled choir" any more, but it also didn't sound like anything I'd heard before.

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Now that I've thought about it more, one could render the tracks to audio and start mangling them. Subtle might be a bit of detuning and maybe dropping in a guitar amp plugin with some grit on it.

Extreme would be serious pitch shifting (octave down or more?) a harsh sounding phaser or flanger and EQ out everything that sounds nice.

 

Not in the budget now but I could see using this for evil instead of good.

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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Not in the budget now but I could see using this for evil instead of good.

 

Why not both? :)

 

I find her "good" voice fairly uninteresting to be honest. Plus, it is in my nature to create a disturbance.

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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Not in the budget now but I could see using this for evil instead of good.

 

Why not both? :)

 

I find her "good" voice fairly uninteresting to be honest.

 

The "CGI" quality has been one of the strong points for me, you can go crazy layering cool stuff in the background, and there's still space for the lead vocal.

 

Even mangling that's as simple as throwing on delay and pitch slides, or "bell tree" pitch delays is cool. Next, I want to try using chords based on her voice as the carrier in a vocoder, and make her talk. Should be interesting :)

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Not in the budget now but I could see using this for evil instead of good.

 

Why not both? :)

 

I find her "good" voice fairly uninteresting to be honest.

 

The "CGI" quality has been one of the strong points for me, you can go crazy layering cool stuff in the background, and there's still space for the lead vocal.

 

Even mangling that's as simple as throwing on delay and pitch slides, or "bell tree" pitch delays is cool. Next, I want to try using chords based on her voice as the carrier in a vocoder, and make her talk. Should be interesting :)

 

I look forward to hearing what you come up with. It's early in the game, there is much that can be done with the nuts and bolts of this idea.

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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I have a small personal barrier about going this deep with a vocal emulation, same as I don't use the patterns in Strum. Its too much like pressing Play and grinning as if just having the button made me cool.

 

A much better analogy than Strum would be having a bunch of violin samples, and putting together a Bach solo violin partita using a MIDI piano roll editor. You don't just type words, you have to string together phonemes, and the process isn't obvious - for example, there's no "ay" sound, you have to composite it from other phonemes. You have to use keyswitching, vary timing of some MIDI notes for words to sound "right," evaluate how to handle legato, and decide whether the next note is a continuation of a previous sound or the start of a new one. If you just "press play," you will not look cool. You'll look like you haven't read the manual :)

 

Her voice is so distinctively pure, it ironically limits its usefulness.

 

To be fair, most people have voices that limit their usefulness. For example, I could never have pictured Joe Cocker singing opera. Blue is kind of like a CGI version of a lot of the vocals done in EDM. As such, it's a useful complement to a human vocalist, and ideal for backgrounds and textures. You can easily flip it around, and say no human can sound quite like Blue, but that doesn't limit the human's usefulness.

 

Remember, I'm someone who won't do sax patches because I think it's a lost cause to try and reproduce those nuances. But that doesn't stop me from layering sax samples with a Matrix-12 horn section patch. My first experiment was layering Blue with a sampled choir to make the samples sound more angelic and ethereal, and it worked perfectly. It didn't sound like a "sampled choir" any more, but it also didn't sound like anything I'd heard before.

 

Okay, I'll admit to the bit of purist thinking noted by Jazzmammal, but I want to fake it well, not blatantly. I'm very drawn to Eric Whitacre's big choir, but I'd feel like a poseur not to use it for Ligeti! Its such a massive, defining tool, its like having an angel glare at you real hard and singe your hair.

 

Fair point about our voices being singular by definition. Don't misunderstand; I'm pondering this thing, because I eat Mellotron-O's for breakfast. Its sterling in sound quality. I've always seen robot-vocoder as a 70s/80s oddity, but anything that comes closer to real gets my attention. I narrowly missed landing a Roland VP-550, whose Vocal Designer nails it for live expressiveness.

 

Oddly enough, the last 2 things I've bought were FOR layering more than anything else. This would sure make M-Tron choirs capable of raising the dead.... hm.

 "I want to be an intellectual, but I don't have the brainpower.
  The absent-mindedness, I've got that licked."
        ~ John Cleese

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