to the threadstarter - do a search for this in the production forum. 'vocal removal' or 'remove vocal' it will return a tonne of threads which have answered this before.

in theory you can remove vocals from a track provided you have an isntrumental version of that track. for example, if you had prodigy's firestarter, the instrumental version of that song and soundforge you could do it.

but. (BIIIIG but) works in theory. not so good in practice.

the principle is fairly simple. if you have 2 60hz sine waves. exactly the same level. and reverse the polarity of one of them (this is also refered to shifting it 180 degrees out of phase), it will cause destructive phasing across all frequencies that are in anti phase. which in this case is the entire sound.

so in theory if you got an instrumental and lined it up perfectled (and i do mean *perfectly* or it wont work), then reverse the polarity of either one, it will cause destructive phasing on pretty much most of the track. i say *most* because theres a problem with this. alot of studio effects (stereo panning, reverb, delay, chorus, flanging, phasing) are phase modulation effects. seeing as 95% of all vocals in dance music have some sort of phase modulation effect on them it makes it near impossible to get a clean rip. why is this? because the non instrumental version of the song causes destructive phasing with parts of itself. some parts of the vocals cause phasing issues with some of the instruments that share similar frequencies in antii phase. look under most songs in a spectrum analyser that reads phase and stereopanning and you'll sort of see quite a bit of it happening.

in the end you will get mixed results at best. some rips you may be able to get a nice clean bit of vocal that is usable. other times there will be artefacts all over the place and it will sound shit. other times you'll still hear parts of the tune playing through the vox or some of the vox itself will disappear or appear to sound more at the front/rear that it should do.

the question is begging to be asked - what is the point of removing vocals if you already have an instrumental..?

edit: wrong end of stick, you are removing the backing track.

___________________
MUGGETS

tell that to dj gt

Thanks guys, I guess its not so easy as I thought..
What about if u convert the file into a MIDI file. Will I then be able to track the vocal side of the song, and just mix it all together with the rest?

And why I am doing this: I got a girl who is so fucking great in vocals, and she asked me to remove the vocal from a Pavarotti song.
Thats why...

Thanks again.

quote:

Originally posted by delurium Thanks guys, I guess its not so easy as I thought.. What about if u convert the file into a MIDI file. Will I then be able to track the vocal side of the song, and just mix it all together with the rest? And why I am doing this: I got a girl who is so fucking great in vocals, and she asked me to remove the vocal from a Pavarotti song. Thats why... Thanks again.

That would be great if you could convert it to a midi......but you can't do that either.

If you can find a midi of the song that someone has made, then you could do it...i'd look for that.

___________________
-Jon
www.DJjoncaserta.com - - mixes and whatnot (melodic progressive house and trance)

quote:

What about if u convert the file into a MIDI file. Will I then be able to track the vocal side of the song, and just mix it all together with the rest?

you misinterpret. MIDI data is not music. it isnt even audio. MIDI data is basically just an instruction. your sound card sends MIDI clock to your hardware synth for example. it tells the synth what tempo to play in, when to trigger the note played and for how long etc. the synth receives MIDI clock and then plays the notes.

a MIDI file is basically a bunch of instructions to tell your synth what notes to play and where and when they are played. you cannot convert audio data into MIDI data - that just doesnt make sense.

quote:

Originally posted by tu_face the question is begging to be asked - what is the point of removing vocals if you already have an instrumental..? edit: wrong end of stick, you are removing the backing track.

I asked this question about removing vocals a few moths ago in the production forum and i received the same answer Derivative gave.


Derivative you really really know your shit. wow



anyways, what I was trying to do was rip the male vocals from a prog track I had and use it over another track. I just wanted to vocals from that track and nothing else.

needless to say, nothing worked and my 'great idea' never came to be.

___________________
Chicago Trance Addict

unlucky with the vocal rip man. i heard there are some vocal removers about now but everyone kind of says they are shit. which is sort of to be expected really.

best thing you can do is meditate and separate the vocals from the song with your miiiiiind.

lol