How to remove instruments.

[Alan7]

Hello volks!

Hope you can help me out. Im trying to get the instruments out of an mp3. Its not a well known mp3 and thus i cant download the track with just the vocales.
Im trying to get the instruments out of an mp3 and leave only the vocales or as good as.

Can anyone tell me how ? I would most appreciatie it!

Thanks,

Regards,
Alan.

[kozikowski]

You probably want Vocal Isolation.

Voice Removal or Isolation
--Center Pan Remover (Voice Remover--Search the page for "Center Pan Remover")
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/nyquistplugins
--Voice Trap
http://www.cloneensemble.com/vt_main.htm
--Extra Boy
http://www.kvraudio.com/get/1651.html
--Kn0ck0ut
http://www.freewebs.com/st3pan0va/


Audacity 1.3 has some built-in tools that might help.

Most of the time you can't do this. If you have a mono MP3 song, you can stop right now. Vocal isolation is impossible. Bubbly MP3 stereo sound files frequently don't work because MP3 scrambles the spacial orientation which the isolation tools need. Another thing that happens is all the instruments in the middle of the stereo field are going to arrive along with the voice -- and you can't separate them.

Koz

[Alan7]

AH oky thank you mate, well appriciate it.

regards,
alan.

[steve]

Removing Instruments from a track is simple as long as you have the original track and an instrumental version of it. First you take the original and load it into Audacity. Then you take the instrumental and import it underneath ctrl+I. After this select the instrumental go to effects and click invert. Now scroll in to line the inverted instrumental under the normal track. You should see a positive peak of the wave with a negetive peak. This is tricky to line them up so the instrumental version will cancel the original instruments through Phase Cancellation. If you dont have the instrumental or cannot find it on the web then the only other way is to make your own instrumental by removing the vocals from the original and saving it as a new track then use phase cancellation. If it is a Mono Recording this is going to be next to impossible to due beacuse almost all the vocal removers use the principle that when a track is mixed down, the lead vocals are center panned in the stereo field. I would recomend {Link Removed} MTU.com and look at Vonoge Vocal Remover. So far this is the best one i have seen. *Note that if the vocals are panned slightly off center this plugin will remove some of the actualy sound quality. Also if you do find an instrumental make sure that it is the same sample rate as the original so you can properly line up for phase cancellation. Check Youtube.com for tutorials on how to do this

[steve]

Vonoge Vocal Remover

I presume that you mean Vogone® Remove Vocals ($59.99, on CDROM $69.99)
That seems a bit expensive for something that, according to this thread in their forum does not appear to be any better than some of the tools that are available for free.

The best vocal remover that I've found so far is the "Blue Cat Widening Gain" which is available as part of the free "Gain Suite" http://www.bluecataudio.com/Products/Product_GainSuite/ . It is a more sophisticated effect than the Audacity Vocal Remover and works by using FFT filtering of the Mid / Side components of the the stereo image. The main advantage of this method is that the resulting track after vocal removal is still stereo. Even this effect cannot remove stereo reverb on the vocal, but it can do an excellent job if the vocal, and any reverb, are panned dead centre and the recording is a decent quality WAV file. MP3 encoding makes vocal removal much harder or impossible as it messes up the stereo image. The effect can also be used for vocal isolation with suitable tracks, though in practice most tracks will only allow the vocal to be brought forward in the mix and not total isolation.

[ninaballerina]

Is there a way to remove piano that plays melody in Ravel's arrangement of Bolero? (or flutes from the official orchestral version?) I want to leave orchestral accompaniment only. Most likely it is not as easy as removing vocals. My goal is to play Ravel's own piano arrangement along with orchestral accompaniment. The easiest would be to find Music Minus One version of Bolero but it does not exist. Appreciate any suggestions.

[steve]

Is there a way to remove piano that plays melody in Ravel's arrangement of Bolero? (or flutes from the official orchestral version?)

Short answer - no.

Longer answer - the "Vocal Remover" effect (sometimes) works by removing what is common to both tracks (i.e. the vocals), leaving behind what is different (i.e. the instruments). This works only if the vocal is panned dead centre of a stereo mix (so that the vocal is identical in both left and right channels) and the instruments are not dead centre (therefore different in one channel to the other.

In the case of the piano in Ravel's arrangement of Bolero, the piano is usually positioned a little to the left of centre, but more importantly the recording is invariably made in a concert hall (or simulated concert hall) in which there is a lot of "reverberation" (short and complex echoes). The reverberation tends to spread the sounds of the instruments, including the piano, so that the sounds become blended across the stereo field. They merge into a single sound with only limited stereo separation.

The easiest would be to find Music Minus One version of Bolero but it does not exist.

Another possibility would be to find a MIDI version of Bolero. MIDI files are like musical scores for synthesizers with each instrument sound having its own "line". Although MIDI music, being synthesized, rarely sounds "convincing", this option may be better than nothing. If you play a MIDI file in a media player that supports MIDI (such as Windows Media Player or QuickTime), the full "score" will play all together. However, there are programs called "MIDI Sequencers" which are able to edit MIDI files, and (key to this suggestion) are able to play only selected tracks (instrument sounds) and mute others.

Some free MIDI sequencers: Muse (Linux only), Rosegarden (Linux only), Quartz AudioMaster (Windows. Their website appears to be dead, so the link is to the program on brothersoft), Garage Band (not actually "free" but included with most Macs).