As in, “How do I…” I want to strip the bass out of an mp3 file into its own file so I can (try to) figure out just what the bass player is playing. If you must know, right now I’m working on “Somebody to Love,” by the Jefferson Airplane, but once I figure this out I’ll be doing it for more songs.
My apologies if this question has already been answered in some other thread. I couldn’t find any obvious candidates.
Thanks,
StuartEugene
Isolating one instrument from a recording is like trying to extract the vanilla from a vanilla ice-cream.
Although an electric bass has predominantly low (bass) frequencies, the frequency range goes up to several thousand Hz, which inextricably mixes with the frequencies of guitars, vocals, drums and other instruments.
You can isolate the “low” frequencies from the piece quite easily by using the Low Pass Filter effect: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/low_pass_filter.html
(try setting Roll-off to 48 dB per octave and frequency to 300 Hz).
Unfortunately that is not likely to help very much for figuring out the bass line, but it may help a little.
I was going to suggest the equalizer tool, but same thing. A heavily filtered bass line is going to sound like a truck going by, a supersonic jet or an earthquake. The flavor, quality, fingering and complexity of the notes are all up much higher – but you’ll figure that out. It may be enough to get you going.
You’re still far ahead of the people who want to separate one instrument and have it survive as a stand-alone performance. Those people really are trying to pull one egg out of the omelet.
If your speakers will even go down that far. “Computer Speakers” don’t win very many awards for bass notes.
Koz
Thanks to you both. I’ll let you know how well it works.