I am hoping somebody can help with this, I’m trying to create an instrumental using the English and Russian versions of the same song (both 320kbps stereo). The backing track in both tracks is identical, the only difference is the vocals. I’ve aligned the tracks up perfectly in Audacity, but I’m not entirely sure what to do from here as this seems to be a pretty unorthodox method of removing vocals, but if it works I should get a clean track with no vocals.
So far I have tried inverting one of the tracks, this gives me the English and Russian vocals mixed together without any music, but I want to do the opposite. I know there are some pros here at vocal removal so i’m hopeful somebody can help me
Yeah… Having different vocals isn’t going to help…
You can try the Vocal Remover effect on either version, but since it removes everything in the “center” and gives you a mono file, the results are usually poor.
The two vocals are totally uncorrelated, so subtraction ends-up sounding exactly like addition!
You can record yourself saying or singing the same thing twice, and subtraction will sound exactly like addition… Either way, you get a mix of the two recordings. Or you can record a male and female singer, and when you subtract you don’t get the difference between the two pitches/voices, you just get a regular mix.
“The sound of the difference (subtraction) is not the same as the difference in the sound.”
P.S.
If you work it out mathematically, you have two equations (or two expressions):
Song1 = Music + English
Song2 = Music + Russian
You’ve eliminated the music and you are left with English mixed with inverted Russian.
You can add or subtract that result (English – Russian) from Song1 or Song2 any way you wish, and you are still left with Music plus some combination of English and/or Russian. There is no solution that gives you the music only.
this seems to be a pretty unorthodox method of removing vocals
Mostly because it doesn’t work very well.
Vocal Removal works by having two identical things on two tracks. Those two things will, if you play your cards eight, subtract to zero. That’s it. You can’t extend that process to other sound management. You probably found that if you just add the two tracks, the music doubles in volume, but the voices stay exactly where they were.
