removing vocals

[jppw]

hi there does any one know or have the best program to remove / extract vocals from tracks, a program that will let me save just the vocal and get rid of the music, thanks

[Biskit]

once a vocal is over a piece of music, im almost sure it cant be extracted, you'll need to acquire the pella.

there's a trick you can do (time ilovepiano knows it better) , if you have two identical digital copies of a track, the music is totally identical. one track is just the music (instrumental) and the other has the music and vocal. then you can sync em together with a delay on one (as if you were phasing) and at some point the phased music will disappear and leave the vocal.

Tim ilovepiano is the best person to ask about this, as ive seen him do it

[lastnightadj]

Originally Posted by Biskit

once a vocal is over a piece of music, im almost sure it cant be extracted, you'll need to acquire the pella.

there's a trick you can do (time ilovepiano knows it better) , if you have two identical digital copies of a track, the music is totally identical. one track is just the music (instrumental) and the other has the music and vocal. then you can sync em together with a delay on one (as if you were phasing) and at some point the phased music will disappear and leave the vocal.

Tim ilovepiano is the best person to ask about this, as ive seen him do it

You have to invert the phase on one of the tracks - it can be done to varying degrees of success - generally due to the quality of the source files - they have to be exactly the same (apart from the vocal) for it to work - Ive only done it to obtain the vocal and not the other way round

[DJFINK]

ive seen a plug in that u get with fruity loops
it does claim to do it but when i tried it i thought it sounded a bit pants...
id say it was impos to totaly remove it
hope this helps m8

[ilovepiano]

Yeah it's kind of possible if you have digital copies of the main tune and the instrumental version. When I say digital, I don't mean mp3 rips of vinyls, I mean real digital copies, like off the original CD single or something.

You invert the phase of one of the tracks and lay it exactly over the other and then mix it down. That way, due to waves cancelling each other out, you will be left with anything that is present in the full version that isn't included in the instrumental.

As for magical plugins, na they're never gonna work. If you bake a cake, can you remove the egg in one piece?

[Monty]

What acapella you after?

[salina]

Numerous programs can do this, and really it's more a matter of just understanding how vocals are typically recorded. I won't go to into detail here, but basically what you're looking to do is nothing more than phase cancellation.

There's a ton of software out there that can automate the process for you now adays, but in basic, most of them simply just tend to be sticking to what I just described doing above. To run about attempting this yourself, try the following:

A. Make sure that the song (or whatever) you have that has the vocal you want to strip is a stereo file.

B. Invert the phase of one of the channels.

C. Add the two together.

I won't go into phase cancellation in detail here (that's easily researchable), but the trouble with the above technique is you are just about always going to be left with some amount of ghosting (things that were reduced in level but not completely stripped). Similarly, at times you may end up killing out more than the vocal....For instance, if the guitar had not fancy stereo what nots going on with it, was pretty much locked in center, well, the same principals that are killing the vocal are going to end up killing it. Also going by this same principal, if the vocal had weird stereo effects being placed on it, you really may not end up killing it nearly as effectively as desired.

People seem to be under the impression some times that there's a sure fire way to just take a vocal out of mixed down track, but there really isn't (at least not that I've come across). I mean really, the best way to take a vocal out of a song without degradation of some kind occurring, is to simply have an unmixed down version of the song that has the vocal on it's own track. Simply toss the vocal track to the side, and that's how you get it done perfectly.


Now another means of doing this at times (I've used this a number of times to grab vocal snippets out of films and what not) is to go ahead and take a sample that has a fair amount of time open before and or after the vocal (or any talking) begins occurring. At times you'll be fortunate enough to have the vocal surrounded by a fairly steadfast noise environment ( i.e., their sitting down to eat and the sound of people talking around them is constantly in the background or steady city background is behind them). Take the period of time that excludes the vocal and pretty much get an analysis of it's frequency content. Anything that falls within that frequency ranges of that sample, consider noise. With that in mind, then go ahead and strip out all of frequency content you picked up from the vocal less bits and apply it to the section with vocals.
Again, typically you can bet that you are going to end up with some ghosting, and you can pretty much bet your going to degrade the vocal itself to some degree, but, so long as the vocal doesn't have to be totally CRYSTAL in sound quality, you're left with an audible result that is quite usable and so long as you have noise of your own going on along with the vocal, the ghost artifacts get buried in the mix and aren't really noticeable.

Hope this helps.

[Biskit]

Originally Posted by ivory

Numerous programs can do this, and really it's more a matter of just understanding how vocals are typically recorded. I won't go to into detail here, but basically what you're looking to do is nothing more than phase cancellation.

There's a ton of software out there that can automate the process for you now adays, but in basic, most of them simply just tend to be sticking to what I just described doing above. To run about attempting this yourself, try the following:

A. Make sure that the song (or whatever) you have that has the vocal you want to strip is a stereo file.

B. Invert the phase of one of the channels.

C. Add the two together.

I won't go into phase cancellation in detail here (that's easily researchable), but the trouble with the above technique is you are just about always going to be left with some amount of ghosting (things that were reduced in level but not completely stripped). Similarly, at times you may end up killing out more than the vocal....For instance, if the guitar had not fancy stereo what nots going on with it, was pretty much locked in center, well, the same principals that are killing the vocal are going to end up killing it. Also going by this same principal, if the vocal had weird stereo effects being placed on it, you really may not end up killing it nearly as effectively as desired.

People seem to be under the impression some times that there's a sure fire way to just take a vocal out of mixed down track, but there really isn't (at least not that I've come across). I mean really, the best way to take a vocal out of a song without degradation of some kind occurring, is to simply have an unmixed down version of the song that has the vocal on it's own track. Simply toss the vocal track to the side, and that's how you get it done perfectly.


Now another means of doing this at times (I've used this a number of times to grab vocal snippets out of films and what not) is to go ahead and take a sample that has a fair amount of time open before and or after the vocal (or any talking) begins occurring. At times you'll be fortunate enough to have the vocal surrounded by a fairly steadfast noise environment ( i.e., their sitting down to eat and the sound of people talking around them is constantly in the background or steady city background is behind them). Take the period of time that excludes the vocal and pretty much get an analysis of it's frequency content. Anything that falls within that frequency ranges of that sample, consider noise. With that in mind, then go ahead and strip out all of frequency content you picked up from the vocal less bits and apply it to the section with vocals.
Again, typically you can bet that you are going to end up with some ghosting, and you can pretty much bet your going to degrade the vocal itself to some degree, but, so long as the vocal doesn't have to be totally CRYSTAL in sound quality, you're left with an audible result that is quite usable and so long as you have noise of your own going on along with the vocal, the ghost artifacts get buried in the mix and aren't really noticeable.

Hope this helps.

invert the phase is what we were on about sal. you been eating a music encyclopidia or summit ?? lol

[salina]

no nipping my hubby's head for his advise ( being a yank i think we can excuse him the lapse of certain phrases or words)

[GRIMMY]

Deffo can be done as Biskit and Ilovepiano said by using that method. No special software required really, you'll probably get a better outcome if u did it manually anyway. I've got a few homemade acca's myself. Some are tip top. Really depends on how busy the track is. Usually tho, once you've laid your own beats over the top, with a crafty bit of EQ, it can usually be pulled it off with minimal interference from the ghost track underneath.

If you're aiming for really professional sound, I'd reccomend you hunt down the acca. Despite a track not being released with an acca, there's always one available. Doubt the artist would let u have it tho.

[Dj Doddy]

I wudnt mind the acapella for u had it Monty !

[Monty]

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