Question

[Carcinophobe]

Hi there,

My father has set up my log-in username so that I cannot install software programs incl. Audacity but I need to get something.

I want to remove the vocals from the mp3 below:
http://songriffs.webs.com/stormymayday.mp3

But I can't do it because I'm denied from installing any software because I'm not an admin.

Can someone please download the mp3 above, remove the vocals (or drown them out) and then upload it to megaupload or sendspace or rapidshare or youtube or etc?

It's for an art project.

[steve]

You should be able to still run Audacity if you download the 1.3.7 beta ZIP file. See this page: http://audacityteam.org/download/beta_windows

Note that it is not possible to use the "centre pan removal" method for deleting vocals on MONO files.
Since I thought that you would have problems with this one (because it is a mono file) I have done some of the work for you. All the vocals are removed except for the very last bit.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/vwe7tk

[Carcinophobe]

I must admit that I'm very very new to using Audacity and most any vocal-modifying software but I'll try my best to figure out how you did it.

Did you have to convert it to another format, modify it, and then covert it back to an mp3?

By the way, is it possible to convert a mono-recorded mp3, such as the one you posted, to a centre-panned vocal recorded mp3? I'm trying to see if I can apply what you did to two other mp3s that happen to be mono-recorded.

[steve]

I just did a cut and paste job on it (with a bit of time stretch and a bit of cross-fading).

The mono file should automatically play through both speakers.

[Carcinophobe]

I just did a cut and paste job on it (with a bit of time stretch and a bit of cross-fading).

The mono file should automatically play through both speakers.

You were able to cut and paste parts of the mp3 despite it being a mono-recording? Is that possible?

BTW how were able to remove the vocals despite it being a mono-recording? A friend of mine said that it wasn't possible but apparently you prove him wrong.

[kozikowski]

<<<BTW how were able to remove the vocals despite it being a mono-recording? A friend of mine said that it wasn't possible but apparently you prove him wrong.>>>

He didn't remove the vocals from the original song. He rewrote the song by only using the non-vocal parts, Cutting, Copying and Pasting as needed. It's intensely labor intensive compared to just pressing the "go" button on a filter. It's not a beginner technique.

Koz

[Carcinophobe]

He didn't remove the vocals from the original song. He rewrote the song by only using the non-vocal parts, Cutting, Copying and Pasting as needed. It's intensely labor intensive compared to just pressing the "go" button on a filter. It's not a beginner technique.

Koz

This may seem odd to ask but is it really possible to cut & paste parts of a song if it is a mono-recorded mp3?

[steve]

He didn't remove the vocals from the original song. He rewrote the song by only using the non-vocal parts, Cutting, Copying and Pasting as needed

Exactly right.

It's intensely labor intensive compared to just pressing the "go" button on a filter.

In this case it was not particularly labour intensive, but compared to just pressing the "go" button, yes it's a bit more work. It would have taken a few minutes to do, rather than just a few seconds, except that I was using it as test material for trying out some brand new Audacity code and Audacity kept crashing, so it ended up taking about half an hour. However, I did manage to pin down one of the bugs and give feedback to the developers (who have now fixed it). All in all, a useful exercise.

This may seem odd to ask but is it really possible to cut & paste parts of a song if it is a mono-recorded mp3?

When an MP3 is loaded into Audacity, it is converted to uncompressed audio data so that Audacity can work on it. I then re-encoded it as an MP3 file to post on the internet. You may have noticed that the file you got back was bigger than the file that you posted. The reason for that is because re-encoding MP3s multiple times degrades the sound quality each time you do it. So as to minimise this effect, I used a fairly high quality setting (about 250kbps if I remember correctly).

Have you had any success running Audacity from that Zip file?

[Carcinophobe]

Have you had any success running Audacity from that Zip file?

I've decided to use my friend's computer instead because mine seems to have some sort of bug at the moment.

So, what were the steps you took to create the mp3? Right now, I'm assuming (although I'm probably wrong) that they were:

1. Download mp3
2. Upload to Audacity
3. Re-encode?
4. Cut & paste?
5. Combine?

[steve]

I used Audacity 1.3 but the procedure in Audacity 1.2 would be more or less the same.

1. Download mp3
2. Import into Audacity
3. Duplicate (Ctl+D) the instrumental parts (two different sections)
4. Copy the duplicate sections so that I have enough times through of each section for the complete song
5. Move each of my instrumental clips so that they roughly line up with the matching (vocal) sections of the original track
6. Adjust the tempo and start positions of the clips to get a good fit with the original track
7. Delete the vocal bits that will not be used
8. Cross-fade the audio clips to make seamless joins
9. "Mix and Render" (same as "Quick Mix" in Audacity 1.2)
10. Listen to the track and check for any bits that aren't quite right
11. There were two bits that were a bit off, so I used "Undo" (Ctrl+Z) and fixed one of them - the other was a small glitch that I couldn't be bothered to fix, so you can still hear that one if you listen carefully.
12. Export as MP3
13. Upload to internet.
14. Replied to the forum.