Hi -
I’m looking for the “Aaaah” sound, on pitch, male and female, no processing, no heavenly choirs, nothing but dry voices, and … hopefully in a variety of keys.
I was very surprised by how hard it was to find this for free, or even in paid packs (hard, as in I couldn’t find even one).
Any suggestions please? These are too high for the male singer we have, and recording him 300 cents down and then tuning up I think will wind up with too many artifacts.
Thanks for any suggestions!
A few years back I was heavily using the Soundiron Vocal libraries on Kontakt for a project. I think they have Halion versions now. Each singer has a full set of sustained Ahh, Ohh, ouuu, eee etc. sounds Still use it frequently, but not daily anymore.
Thanks, @raino !
I don’t have Kontakt, and only have the SE version of Halion Sonic.
I’ll look it up, hopefully (as awesome as it sounds) it’s free or cheeep 
.
Thanks!
PS: I looked at their catalog, for solo voices i see “The Tenors”, is that the one you were using? The other choices in the “Solo Voices” category seemed a little different, but just by my readings of the description.
2nd edit: Listened to several of the “Solo Voices” offerings, I’m wondering if what you used isn’t for sale anymore …
Thanks again!
I got them one by one as the different libraries were released. They also didn’t require the full Kontakt Player and worked with the free Player. I know they started to sell (or did?) them bundled after that, but also individually. No idea on their current lineup.
Here’s what I have (and looking at the list I’m wondering if I missed a couple on my recent PC migration)
Thanks, @raino !
I checked a few of those out, and will look at the others as well.
The samples available for listening I heard were mainly/all vocals in the setting of sound effects, or complex vocalizations, both a little different than what I am looking for - isolated “Aahs” in different keys, male and female ideally.
Fingers crossed with the other ones I haven’t heard yet!
Are you just wanting to layer some vox in the background? Emvoice can work and there’s a free version called Emvoice One.
On it’s own, it sounds pretty cheesy, but if you layer them and are wanting to apply your own effects they can be quite handy. All depends on application, of course.
All the other libraries I’ve used are in Kontakt (Ethera etc) - If you get stuck maybe you could upload the melody as MIDI and I can run it through a variety of libraries with fx disabled and return as audio files?
Looperman can be handy for free samples if you could chop/use any of those and put it on a sampler track?
Also, have you tried pitching him using Variaudio, rather than applying a transpose to the track? You get more vocal options there, adjusting formants can add depth for harmonies, for example.
Thanks, @skijumptoes !
These will be fairly exposed vocals. I will look at your links, and thank you so much for your kind offer!
I will take you up on it if still open if i can’t find something appropriate on line, and if moving it up 300 cents or so doesn’t quite work in either Variaudio or Revoice Pro.
So many things seem to require Kontakt. I’ll have to look at that again, it’s been a while since I last did.
Thanks again!
EastWest also do a subscription service (composer cloud) where you get all their libraries for a monthly fee. It’s about $30/month for the plan where you can just run it for a month and stop.
I know a lot of people who dip in and out of that if they need backing vocals, orchestral or such items. Usually it’s 20/month if you commit for the year.
Really don’t know your budget or how big the project is, but that may also be a consideration if you’re working on multiple tracks and would feel that it’s value for money? …Or just do the free trial if it’s a one-off!
If you’re looking for free libraries, look at SoundFont, the soundfont player is free, there’s probably something for you.
Here is a link, but do a deeper search…
Thank you, @skijumptoes and @Rene_L ! I’ve set up the templates for recording each of these voices (in preparation for uptuning them a lot) but maybe I’ll find something in the links that will save mucho time and sound good!
These are exposed (i.e., not ambient/background) dual harmony “ah’s” way up around high D and Bb, mainly in Ebm , at 120 BPM.
Examples might be something Queen would do, or The dual BV at 1:30 and 2:40 here, Dear Prudence (Remastered 2009) - YouTube; isolated at 15:45, 16:51, and 17:40 here Deconstructing Dear Prudence (Isolated Tracks) - YouTube .
I might be asking too much to find something like that on line…
I will look at all these, much appreciated!
Alexis, I think the best thing to do is to record what you want to have as vocals. Although it may require several takes, the result will be natural and exactly what you want.
Don’t waste time searching the internet. Grab a mic or two, invite some friends over, grab a beer and have fun until the wee hours of the morning…
Must admit that’d have been my approach, just keep layering it.
Or if you have no friends, no beer and no time then there’s always fiverr :).
I’ve used vocalists in the past for some EDM stuff for a radio station, and they were fantastic. Even the dirt cheap ones lol.
Dang, @skijumptoes , those guys are cheeep ! I’ve used Studio Pros for female vox before, good to very good results on one song, and technically OK but lacking emotion on another, but point being they were *much more expensive!
We’ll see how the recording goes over the next few weeks (you got that part right, I’ve got no time! … a little more beer than time though, but nail on head actually no musical friends at all, waaah!).
Maybe record the BV 300 cents low then tune them higher, maybe sing them in the right key but falsetto, or maybe power through it in the right key without falsetto … maybe some kind of blend of all three, or maybe vocal cords for hire … we’ll see!
Thanks to everyone for helping me think through this. I guess i kind of thought beforehand that anything and everything could be downloaded, haha!
I’ve got the vox templates all set up and ready to record, with a violin and a trumpet as guide “vocals” (
), here we go! 
Probably cause that’s what sells. They have the plain ones too, but they aren’t likely to drive much product out the door I’d guess.
I was using them to make mockups of vocal parts. Here’s a few clips from then. Any reverb or delays you hear were added in Cubase. The samples alone are pretty dry & plain. On the 1st one I’m switching vowels, but the next ones are only using the Ahhh sound. The first female voice is The Soprano and the 2nd Strawberry on the guys it is The Bass for sure and either Bryn or The Tenor
That is super impressive, thanks for posting that @raino !
How does all that work … you can play the voices like a keyboard, any key, any rhythm? And they’re free of any background music, rhythms, etc., they are just dry solo voices (all the examples on their website I clicked were all dressed up with background music)?
Is it quite labor intensive? (Not even sure why I’m asking, the alternative - singing, then rescue editing ad infinitum to try to beat them into something listenable - takes a long while as well). Really what I guess I mean to ask is … is there a steep learning curve to get something like your finished product?
Thanks for taking the time to share and help!
I’ve been driving around all day practicing harmonies, getting ready and excited for recording in a couple of weeks … now you’ve got me wondering again if those downloadable voices are the way to go!
PS: The prices of some of the vocal sets might be OK, but will I have to spend beaucoup bucks on a Kontact or anything like that?
Not if it can use the free Kontakt Player which most libraries will tell you if they can or can’t work with.
The libraries that appear here need the full player.
While the free one can only load stuff using a file browser not the Kontakt GUI.
Yeah pretty much. Each one has a bunch of different Instruments that run the range from built in phrases to different articulations and more FX/sound design configs.
These are using the Sustains Instrument which lets you key-switch different vowels. You can also use cc to dynamically change parameters like Attack or Release. For example using the Swell control lets you contour the intensity. In the first example I’m dynamically changing the Vowels and Swell so it’s more complex sounding than the others which are just using static settings but still sound pretty decent.
Keep in mind that the Kontakt platform is used by a zillion different Virtual Instrument builders and comes with a vast library built in. I just looked at the NI site and see they have it for “half off” at $200.
You can hear a bunch more of these vowel voices here - both individual and an occasional choir.
Hi @raino -
That all looks incredible.
I’m thinking maybe I’ll approach things as follows: try and see how it turns out actually capturing audio in a mic, and if that’s just not quite good enough well then I’ll be checking out these very cool things.
It’s only about 20 seconds of singing, but it’s so dang high.
If I do wind up having problems doing it organically with pressure waves distorting a transducer,
“Who’m I gonna call?”
Well I ain’t afraid of no 
s, no sir, but that’s not even barely relevant here. Obviously I’d call you … aka, “The Wizard of Aaahs”!
Just saw this vocal synthesizer in the latest KVR Newsletter. Maybe their trial can get you through the task at hand (or should that be mouth).
Gotta say as someone who owns a few of these kinds of tools, the first paragraph is true.
The Ladies by Realitone.
