is there a software that will allow me to take the vocals out and just have a song be instrumental
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is there a software that will allow me to take the vocals out and just have a song be instrumental
No program will completely remove the vocal part, but GoldWave does a pretty good job of it.
If the vocal was recorded exactly in the middle on the stereo tracks, GoldWave will remove almost all of it to where what is left will sound sort of like a background echo. Since some of the music is dead center of the stereo tracks too, a little of it will be removed too, but the music that is left will be good enough for making Karoke type CD's for having fun with.
If the vocal was not recorded exactly in the middle of the stereo tracks, more vocal will be left on them.
It will not remove the vocal at all on a digitized re-make of an original recording.
You cannot remove the vocal on MP3's. The whole song will disappear.
Do a google search for GoldWave. You shouldn't have any trouble finding it.
The program is actually $40.00, but the download is a fully working version & does not have a cut off date, no adware, no spyware, & no nag screens. The only draw back to the program is a limit on the amount of operations you can do on one audio file before you have to save it, but the programer is very generous with that. It is a full working version. You can piddle around all you want up to a certain amount of changes on a file & save the files & everything.
Fiddlinmomma
cool thanx but i have no idea how to delete the vocals
Look under Effects>Stereo>Remove Vocals.
Note that it's not perfect. What's left will be a mono file.
"It will not remove the vocal at all on a digitized re-make of an original recording".
No offense, fiddlinmomma, but would you care to elaborate on that?
cool thanx
Fiddlinmomma, your statement is vague, but it doesn't matter. That Goldwave popup is vague too, mentioning it might not work on some recordings, but there's no discussion of it in the help file, so I can see where you were coming from.
It works okay with most all CD's I've tried, but in my experience any disc with the "Acusonic" process, (something Quincy Jones favored in the 70's and 80's; you can hear it on "Give Me the Night" by George Benson, for example), doesn't work very well at all. That's not particularly a Goldwave thing, however. My old Sony receiver with the quasi surround sound doesn't like Acusonic and the like either.
JoJo Gunn,
Elaboration.
I have tried it on CD's made from stereo recordings that were originally mastered on tapes, then purportedly digitized from the master tapes. It didn't work. Nothing was significantly removed. Maybe I wasn't exactly clear on the whole thing, but that is what I meant. :)
Newer technology that uses digital methods to master, do just fine. I have not had good success, in GoldWave, with analog masterings that have been digitized later to a CD. I use GoldWave a lot, and pretty well know when it will work & when it won't.
Even on digitally mastered recordings, when the vocal is panned farther into one track than it is into the other track, a lot of the vocal will remain & will be quite audible, even on external speakers.
For maximum removal, the vocals have to be dead center of the tracks & even then an echo will remain. Not much, but a little. Not very noticeable with external speakers, but noticeable with a headset.
Fiddlinmomma.
"I have tried it on CD's made from stereo recordings that were originally mastered on tapes, then purportedly digitized from the master tapes. It didn't work. Nothing was significantly removed".
Well, that's where my original confusion comes in. It's all "digitized", on a CD, and when it's put into your computer. An analog cassette fed into the computer is now digitized.
Hopefully I won't get technical here. If you hook up your speakers on your stereo backwards, you'll notice the bass is "thin" and weak, not much punch. It's important to keep polarity correct at every step, from the microphones while recording, to mixing, mastering, and playback. From what you describe somehow those phase relationships between left and right gets manipulated, or cancelled, which is not always a bad thing, since it's what we want Goldwave and the like to do when removing vocals. (It's more complicated than that, but that's what's going on at it's most basic).
"I have not had good success, in GoldWave, with analog masterings that have been digitized later to a CD.
Again I wonder if something is reversed in the process. Maybe it's lost in the mixdown instead. Judging by your screen name, are you in the music business? If so, are you talking about your own recordings, have your own setup? One patch cable reversed can throw it all out of whack.
Yes, I am a musician & singer, although not a famous one. :D
I am not talking about my own recordings. And yes, I do have my own setup of sorts, but I don't remove the vocals on my own recordings.
I am refering to commercially purchased CD's. The older songs of older artists that have been digitized from analog tape masters onto CD's by companies that supposedly know how to do that stuff, don't work. That's been my experience. I can't help that. Not my fault. :)
Very true, but that don't necessarily mean the vocal can be removed after digitizing. That is not true digitization.Quote:
An analog cassette fed into the computer is now digitized.
I have recorded in tapes, directly into GoldWave & tried the process, and removing the vocals didn't work then either, to any appreciable amount on most songs, and when it did work, it wasn't enough.
I know about polarity & stuff. Used to work on my own sound equipment before it got too complicated to work on. :)
Fiddlinmomma.
I understand. I just try to write so others can keep up too. :)
I like Goldwave, and always recommend it, but it's not the most powerful audio tool for all things. Others might know of some better programs for vocal removal. At my stage of computing, I'm just learning a little here and there. Don't have any kind of monster setup.
I still don't follow you on "true digitization". :confused:
EDIT- By the way, you said it couldn't be done at all on MP3's. I just did it, on "Mama Told Me" by Three Dog Night. Ripped at 44100-16khz wav from EasyCD, converted to 320kbs MP3 by CDex, then used Goldwave. It worked as well as that old receiver, at least. What are you using? CDex is a heckuva good ripper for wavs and MP3's.
http://www.cdex.n3.net/
As I understand it, true digitization was never an analog to begin with.
All tracks are digitally recorded separately to begin with. Synchronized & combined into a master file, then transferred to CD. I have a friend with a recording studio, and that's basically the way he explains it. Is he wrong? If so, by all means tell me!
Now, as to MP3's. I never tried it on a file that I recorded into the computer, then made into an MP3. It was MP3's I'd gotten off the Internet. When I tried to remove the vocal, the whole song went kafoot. :) Cyberspaced that dude. :D You did one. Great! I never got it to work. Just stating my experiences. :)
Yes, I like GoldWave best for some things, but it is not much good on some others. Such as changing the key without losing quality. Going up or down a half step, it does fine, but the bigger change you make the worse the quality gets. WavLab is mucho better for that. Of course, WavLab is a lot more dinero too.
Fiddlinmomma.
Well, I never messed with MP3's all that much. Maybe what you're getting is at lower bitrates? I notice that every now and then there are posts around here mentioning corrupt files too.
As far as what your friend said, multi tracks can be written either analog or digital. I'm not sure, but seems that a lot today favor recording vocals in analog, for warmth, and perhaps percussion as well, and most of the rest is digital straight through. But anyway, you can record and edit everything in analog, and take it to the pressing plant, and let them convert it.
Three Dog Night's, being from the late 60's-early 70's, were analog, done on old 8 track machines, editing done with razor blades. MCA got the masters out, (I think. Listening to "It Ain't Easy" left me with the impression they dug out an old tape equalized for vinyl pressings :mad: ) and did essentially what we do, converted it to digital, and sent it to the pressing plants. Mastering is basically someone putting an equalizer to the tapes, if they even do that much. Mixing is something else again, where individual tracks are tweaked or even deleted, voices or instruments are enhanced, or placed differently, maybe something added years later, such as that travesty by Alan Parsons (the Poe album. Jeez, why "fix" something that wasn't broke???).
Yes, they can, and he prefers true digital all the way. I don't.Quote:
As far as what your friend said, multi tracks can be written either analog or digital.
Personally, I prefer doing all of my individual tracks on plain old analog tapes, then recording them individually into the computer, then synchronizing them, then combining them into a master, then transferring them to CD. It's a lot of work, but I like the sound it gives me. Pure digital is TOO clean.
I like the analog sound, but in order for the computer digitization conversion of the individual analog tape tracks to work good, you have to be careful not to overide the tape & cause any kind of distortion whatsoever, because the computer sound card will pick up EVERYTHING you didn't want someone to hear. :D I've had them where the tapes sounded great to the ear, even with a headset, but after the digitizing process, I heard stuff that I didn't know was on that tape track.
Fiddlinmomma
Then if you decide to try CDex, don't check "normalize volume" and bring everything to, say, 93db. You'll hear hiss, 60 cycle hum, print through, all kinds of junk, and at the same levels.
I like to play around, see what happens, but now you see why I'm such a fan of RW's. ;)