Hey, I’m new to audacity. I was wondering if it’s possible to split up the instrument parts in a song? It also has some “vocals” in it and I followed the tutorial on how to mute those but it didn’t work, maybe I just followed the instructions wrong. I would just like to listen to specific parts…it’d be super helpful if someone could help me out!!
In a word, no. Your ear can tell that the music is an oboe, but to the software, it’s just a bunch of blue waves. Vocal Removal, when it works at all, works by “knowing” what’s in the exact left-right center of the stereo show. If the vocal isn’t in the middle, or has any of about a hundred other problems, it fails.
People keep trying to use the idea that some instruments have higher or lower pitch than others. True, but they can all play similar notes, and that’s what kills you for separating them. The piano, the oboe, and the violin can all hit that “A” at the beginning of the concert. That kills pitch separation right there.
There are a couple of money-based software products that claim to be able to separate instruments, but at best they only do an OK job, and they all require that you start out with a perfect stereo show. No compressed Internet MP3s.
Koz
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Alrighty I kind of thought so…thank you for your help! Just one more question (I don’t think it’ll even be worth asking) but the song I’m trying to split into parts is a Drumline cadence. So there is a Snare Drum, Bass Drum, Tenor Drum, and a Cymbal. They each have a pretty distinct sound but not so much of a pitch besides the Tenor Drums, do you think I could do anything with that?
Depends on how they were miked. If each drum had its own microphone and the mixer (human) placed each drum in a different “location” (left to right), then one of the cost-based software packages might be able to help a little.
Someone many threads ago suggested that you could use Noise Reduction to partially separate instruments. Pick one instance of one drum and use that as the capture profile. Then try to “subtract” that profile from the whole performance. Theory has it that the one drum in the profile should vanish – or reduce in volume.
However, Noise Reduction has a history of destroying everything in the performance while it’s working, so you should try it anyway with the idea of an experiment nobody is expecting to work.
Someone made the analogy of carefully removing the chocolate from a chocolate cake.
Koz
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