Edit or isolate by frequency

[briwood]

I think this is a little different that removing vocals. Maybe simpler.

Say I have a recording of a flute soloing over bass and drum accompaniment. I would like to edit out the flute frequency range. I'll lose some cymbals and other stuff, but that's okay. Is there a VST plugin or something that I can use for this?

Thanks.

[kozikowski]

It wouldn't be dreadful to start out life with the built-in Effects > Equalization. It seems to only equalize down to -24 dB which is barely enough to even bother with, but if you pull the work window larger and taller, you find out it's actually much better than that.

http://kozco.com/tech/audacity/voiceEq.jpg

It's a rubber band if you've never used it before. Just grab and pull.

It's still not going to work. By the time you get rid of the flute, all the life will be gone from the drums (drums on AM radio?) and all the slap will be gone from the bass.

Koz

[steve]

It seems to only equalize down to -24 dB which is barely enough...

If you try Audacity 1.3.4, there is a slider for changing the dynamic range of the Eq. (right down to -120 dB)

By the time you get rid of the flute, all the life will be gone from the drums (drums on AM radio?) and all the slap will be gone from the bass.

Very true.

If you have a section of flute playing on its own, the majority of the signal will be in the range of the fundamental frequency, with lesser amounts over the first few harmonics. Above this (higher frequencies) there will be the "breathiness" of the flute. If you isolate these higher frequencies using the Equaliser, you could use the "Noise Removal" effect to reduce these sounds from the mix, after removing just the lower frequencies of the flute with the Equaliser effect.

You can theoretically improve the results by using a combination of dynamic processing and filtering, but it gets very complicated, would require a great deal of work and is approaching the limits of what Audacity can do.

[briwood]

Thanks a lot for your replies. I'll try it out and I'll be prepared for the results to be a bit sucky.