How to remove vocals with a software based solution

[The Pathfinder]

Hey,
Just signed up and had a question about removing vocals from commercial tracks. I love the beats used in todays urban music, but most are not talking about anything significant. I desire to remove the vocals and listen to the instrumental tracks. How do I do this on my computer? Also does anyone know of a hardware based solution. Looked at a review of the Alesis Vocal Zapper and 2 of the 3 reviews were negative. I also looked at the Alesis Play Mate and it had no reviews. Any help is greatly appreciated!!!

The Pathfinder

[lampshadeboy1]

Hey,
Just signed up and had a question about removing vocals from commercial tracks. I love the beats used in todays urban music, but most are not talking about anything significant. I desire to remove the vocals and listen to the instrumental tracks. How do I do this on my computer?

Removing vocals from an already mixed song is fairly easy, but it doesn't always work. The philosophy behind it is that most engineers mix vocals center (as well as kick, snare, etc.), so if you remove the center, then the vocals will go away. I have found this to only work half of the time, and it usually sounds pretty bad, but here's how you do it.

1. Import your song (it MUST be a stereo file or it definitely won't work)
2. Split the left and right tracks and make them both two separate mono tracks.
3. Duplicate both tracks so you have a total of 4 tracks MONO L 1 and 2 & MONO R 1 and 2
4. Run a low pass filter on MONO L 1 and MONO R 1 @ 10,000hz
5. Run a high pass filter on MONO L 1 and MONO R 1 @ 120hz
5. Reverse the phase of MONO R 1
6. Run a high pass filter on MONO L 2 and MONO R 2 @ 10,000hz
7. Run a low pass filter on MONO L 2 and MONO R 2 @ 120hz
8. Mix down to a mono file.

What this basically does is takes everything about 10,000hz and below 120hz and leaves it alone while removing the center of the stereo field on 120 hz - 10,000 hz. So you should still have some decent high / low end while removing most of the vocals.

Remember, this may or may not work, depending on how the song was mixed.

Some good software to use to do the editing is Audacity.sourceforge.net. It's free.

- Cody Hazelwood

[Bavan74]

Completely removing the vocals is not possible. Try out doing it with audio editing software. Suggests FlexiMusic Wave Editor (http://www.fleximusic.com/waveditor/overview.htm). In this software using either “Band Pass/ Stop Filter or channel mix” command you can eliminate the vocals to some extend.

[JeffBarnett]

Removing the vocals after a song is mixed is like removing the eggs after a cake is baked. It's impossible to do.

What is possible is center channel cancellation, but the effectiveness of this is very limited depending on how the song was mixed originally. I've only had real success with mixes from the 70's, where the lead vocal (and nothing else) is panned dead-center.

Of the solutions available, the Alesis VocalZapper seems to work the best, but remember, it all depends completely on the original mix. I'm betting thosee negative reviews where from people that didn't understand that vocal removal is usually an exercise in futility.

[Roadpebble]

Something that has not yet been mentioned here is that whatever song you want to cut the vocals out of must be in wav format or come from a direct recording (in the case with playing through the vocal zapper). As it has been mentioned here vocal cancelation depends on the vocals being dead center in the mix. However, the somewhat unmentioned theme there is that the vocal wave on the right channel is exactly the same as the vocal wave on the left channel. If they are you can use phase cancelation to remove that particular section of the wave. With MP3's or any other compressed audio format this sameness is lost. The audio compression takes artifacts out of the recording that the listener isn't likely to hear. The algorithms used, naturally, are not going to process each channel exactly the same. In fact, the channels are more likely to become completely different (looking through a microscope in a sense). Hence, if you want to remove the vocals, make sure you have a perfect source (i.e. track on original CD or wav copy of the track). If you don't, there is no way to get the results that you want.

[teamh3]

Here's my suggestion...

Search the internet for the midi file of the song you want. Assign the proper instruments (drums, bass, synth, etc.)to the midi channels. Record the new stereo file and you're done!

It's a little work, but not bad if you really must have the instrumental.

H3

[JeffBarnett]

My suggestion...

Go to http://www.soundchoice.com/audio.htm and see if they have the song you want. You can download thousands of songs for $.88 each, professionally recorded, engineered to match the original recording, just missing the lead vocal.