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ssceja · Posted - Sun May 06, 2001 1:16 pm

Hello I am a little new to this program but I know how to do a little Dj in it. What I wanted to know is how do I erase The Vocals(or Lyrics from a song) so that I just keep the music. Or how do I erase the Music and keep the lyrics so that I can mix those Lyrics with another song? Thank You for your help

beetle · Location: USA

Go to this thread:

'Isolating vocals'

Why do I get the feeling that the same person is posting under different names and asking this same question every week?

Graeme · Member Location: Spain

RobertM · Posted - Sun May 06, 2001 6:12 pm

Oops, Beetle and Graeme, I see that you two beat me to the punch. I usually read the forum in FIFO, so I responded to the first post with the incorrectly spelled title.

BTW, I had the EXACT same thought; that someone is starting to take a jab at us all by seeing how far we'll go in continuing to answer this topic. No offense is intended, ssceja, if your query is genuine. If you look though the past topics, you'll see where some of the frustration is coming from.

Syntrillium M.D. · Location: USA

Hi All. Okay, as Graeme, Beetle and Robert pointed out, removing vocals is somewhat possible (with varied results) but removing music and extracting isolated vocals is virtually impossible.

Here is the method (from within Cool EDit) to remove vocals using the Channel Mixer Transform...

"Vocal Cut" only works on some stereo files; it depends on the vocals being in the center of the stereo image. If they're off to one side or another, it won't work. This feature works on only about 50% of files. Here's more information on how the file has to be structured.

Use the Vocal Cut preset found under the Transform>Amplitude>Channel Mixer menu to remove the vocals from stereo recordings. This preset will sum the left channel with the inverse of the right, and place the result into both channels. On music where the vocals are equally loud on both channels, the vocals will disappear, or come close to disappearing. Note that the Vocal Cut preset is ineffective on monophonic recordings and stereo recordings in which the vocals are not in the center of the stereo image.

---Syntrillium Support

Graeme · Member Location: Spain

urumuqi74 · Posted - Mon May 07, 2001 6:26 pm

beetle · Location: USA

Interesting thought!!!

It seems that a big market is present for songs without lyrics and lyrics without songs. We are missing an opportunity here!!![/quote]

Partucularly in the hip-hop/rap community.

johnschultheiss · Posted - Tue May 08, 2001 8:45 am

So, are Graeme and beetle right that there's one person asking this over and over, or is karaoke making a HUGE worldwide resurgence? What's up with that, anyhow?

And it's not just this forum. I have had people I know come up to me and say something like, "hey - you know something about computers and audio. What do I need to remove the vocals from a song...?"

I think uru is right - we're missing a huge opportunity here. There seem to be a bunch of people who want to try to sound like the vocalist they're trying to cut out; maybe the rest of us should be selling them recordings that sound like the band they're trying to sing with...

Syntrillium M.D. · Location: USA

You hit the nail on the head, John...Sound-a-like. Which is what most companies do when the can't get the rights to actually license masters of songs (and also, have no real way of removing vocals). SO, they remake the song, note for note, with some good ears (to duplicate EQ, reverbs, etc). A lot cheaper than licensing originals, and you have the pride in knowing that at least you did something other than an A-minus-B listening trick!

---Syntrillium Support

urumuqi74 · Posted - Tue May 08, 2001 9:36 am

Casemeister · Posted - Tue May 08, 2001 7:59 pm

Here's a question.....

I know they're using pro-grade equipment and such, but how do the record labels remove vocals from MONO recordings? I remember reading about a Patsy Cline CD that featured, among others, Waylon Jennings doing a duet with her. I also remember the guy in charge of the project saying how difficult it was to remove the vocals from a mono master (which means they didn't overdub a new backing track and "play over" her). But he managed to do it, somehow. Any ideas on how??

All this talk of vocal removal and isolation made me think of that Smile

beetle · Location: USA

I don't know the story on that but the big guys and gals usually don't do that sort of thing.

urumuqi74 · Posted - Wed May 09, 2001 5:37 am

Scott Hoffmann · Location: USA

I was asked by a high school student to remove the vocals from Sheryl Crows Stong Enough song for a concert they put on, I told the student it was close but you can still hear them, she told me she would sing louder, I attended the concert and it really was amazing, she even changed the word "hell" to "alone" because it is a christian high school.
I used eq and expansion slightly to bring back some of the life to the track after the vocal cut.

Is it illegal to use a song like that in a public address.

urumuqi74 · Posted - Wed May 09, 2001 10:49 am

beetle · Location: USA

But, these days, you never know. Someone's attournys could be filing a lawsiut against someone doing this.

richie-rich · Posted - Wed May 09, 2001 1:33 pm

Hello. I thought I'd give some of my own thoughts on this topic, see what you guys think. Call me crazy, heh. jk.

The closest thing I can come up with that will remove voices is a thx/ac3 decoder. Although it does not do it entirely, it is the nearest thing I can think of. By using 2 channels, the decoder decodes it to 5 channels, left, center, right, rear left, and rear right. the center channel is where the frequencies of the same pitch are in phase (ie voice, comes out of both channels), and rear is where they are out of phase (180 degrees). I have written a small program which uses fourier transforms and hanning windows to simulate a thx/ac3 decoder. Here is a sample of the output.

Original Track:
ftp://24.70.105.63/Samples/original.mp3

Track with Center Removed:
ftp://24.70.105.63/Samples/leftright.mp3

Track with Center Isolated:
ftp://24.70.105.63/Samples/center.mp3

Dontknonottinboutcooledit · Posted - Wed May 09, 2001 3:14 pm

Hey Yall.
Iv asked this problem before... yall prob. remember, huh? haha. I found a pretty good way, use everybodys favorite program.. NAPSTER! type Instrumental in the artest box, then in the song, type the song you want. You might not find tha song you want, but try again at a diffrent time, maybe someone is one that has it. This works really good. most of the songs i have that are insturmentals have no "left overs" of the vocals. well i hope that helps you.
;0)

urumuqi74 · Posted - Wed May 09, 2001 6:47 pm

maxlittlmore · Posted - Sat May 26, 2001 1:51 am

mattw · Posted - Sat May 26, 2001 9:12 am

Yes, yes! I've been scouring the net for a program like that. Though, isn't THX and AC3 a descrete format (IE: seperate channels are all kept seperate)? I didn't think either has a matrixed format, like Dolby Surround or Pro Logic.

Oh yeah, and another thing people forget about for removing vocals and leaving music is MIDI. You can get a MIDI of just about any song off the internet, and with a really good software synth or a really good SoundFont bank, you can get some pretty good results.