Vocal Forge

VOCAL FORGE is a new ZERO-G virtual instrument created by MIKE WILKIE & MATTHEW CORBETT (who produced the critically acclaimed Sounds of the 70s VI) and is powered by Native Instruments Intakt. Its uniquely inspiring new library features 800 patches and over 2,500 samples in 1.2 Gb of brand new material sourced entirely from pro vocal performances.

Male and female MCs, sweet R+B, gospel singers, dance and pop vocals all recorded with accompanying harmonies. There are even a few wild cards such as Choral, Gothic and even Opera styles. Plus there is a vocal Toolbox loaded with single vocal lines, scratches, effected vocals, grunts & breaths, human beatbox & percussion grooves and fake TV and radio clips. The whole library is presented within NI's stunning state-of-the-art Intakt interface which will soon have you customizing, shaping and manipulating the vocal lines to suit your own requirements. The awesome flexibility of the custom high-performance interface allows you to automatically sync any of these vocal lines to your song's tempo, and you can apply a vast amount of sound-shaping to each vocal as well!

We approached the concept of the VOCAL FORGE as music producers. During our own productions there is always a need for vocal elements. Quite often these are little bites and phrases, sometimes spoken, sometimes scratched on vinyl but there are many, many occasions when we've wanted a bit more, something nearly fully structured or something with partial lyrical content. Normally for this we have to get a sessionist in, write the stuff, and incur the time and expense for that luxury.

As a logical step forward we thought it would be a great idea to have all of these elements in one place, all easily adaptable, and all poised to drop in to our productions, a bit MORE than has been accessible to this point!

Like many people we've got vocal sample CDs falling off our shelves but so often, in fact almost always they are comprised of divas screeching 'TAAAAAKKKKE MEEE HIGGGGGHHHHEEEEERR' at the top of their lungs in 12 different keys!

Another element largely ignored is the growth of urban vocals. Urban music has now surpassed Country as the biggest selling music form on the planet but this a fact that isn't mirrored in vocal sample content.

We thought the only way to get these samples is to go to source. We hooked up with Erroll Lawson from Birmingham's Higher Level Music, who looks after a collective of Urban artists based in the city. These artists were the perfect fit for the project. Male and female MCs, sweet R+B and gospel singers and a few wild cards to boot.

We also drafted in an old contact from New York for the authentic US Urban flavour.

We knew that many producers out there wouldn't have access to great vocalists or the equipment to record them effectively so we thought writing and recording entire song structures including BVs and adlibs would make an excellent backbone to the project. This way each element of the song could be included, excluded, mixed up, down, extended, reduced, pitched and time-stretched to adapt to any medium. Producers could then include substantial original vocals in their tracks without delving into to the legal quagmire of bootlegging.

There's little point to having a hit record if you have to surrender 99% of your royalties because you didn't get the proper clearance. With the vocal forge users will have a large, adaptable and legally water-tight tool to assist with achieving a more rounded production.

Where possible we tried to steer around the vocal sample cliches and opted for quirky material that would help producers finished tracks to stand out, lateral thinking works!

As well as dry vocals we wanted to include effected, vocoded, re-sampled and bizarre recorded sections. We bought megaphones, cheap nasty karaoke machines, 8 and 12 bit samplers as well as some very special mics and hardware vocoders. For the songs we kept effects to a minimum and the compression very standard so all of the production decisions would be left to the final user.

So ladies and gentlemen, after many months of hard vocalising with a rousing shout of 'no clichés!' each day before work, we are delighted to present to you 'Vocal Forge'! We wish you the very best with your projects and thanks for your interest.