Music Tech: Mike Greene’s Realivox Vocal Palette gives voice to those ‘la-la-las’

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Greene’s Realivox Vocal Palette software adds the female ‘oohs,’ ‘aahs’ and ‘la-la-las’ to a song. Coming soon is the male version of the software.

Television and film composer Mike Greene was turning heads over the weekend at the 2011 National Assn. of Music Merchants show in Anaheim as he ran his fingers up and down the piano keyboard in front of him. Instead of the piano, organ or synthesizer sounds that typically emanate from such instruments, passersby heard the tones of a female voice singing “la-la-la-las,” complete with lifelike vibrato. It’s part of a Realivox Vocal Palette software package that Greene has created. Initially, he was just looking for a way to help himself in recording his own scores.

“I’d hire singers to come in,” Greene said, “then inevitably after they left, I realized I should have gotten them to record some background ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs,’ or something on a new part I wrote later.” His Realivox program contains some two dozen syllables — “ooh,” “aah,” “bop,” “doo,” “wah,” etc. — that he recorded with a variety of male and female singers, programmed in a way that brings them to life.

Greene, whose professional credits include writing dozens of songs for episodes of “Bill Nye the Science Guy,” noted that other companies have packaged libraries of choirs, but he hasn’t come across such a product making realistic individual voices. “It’s a lot of work,” he said with a laugh. “Now I know why nobody else has done it.” The first package, using female voices, will be available in February, followed in April by a companion package of male voices through Greene’s website, www.realitone.com.

--Randy Lewis