Removing Vocals from song

[Mendel]

it is possible. does anyone know what freq ?
ofcourse you will always hear the vocals a bit but there are some freq's to lose the vocals on a song. anyone know ?

 

[JeffTD]

Try taking just the far left/right sides - cancel out the middle, where most of the vocals are.

 

[xmarcelx]

You can mix left and right track and "inverse the phase" on one track... this cancel out everthing which is dead center in the mix ... but this also kills snare, kickdrum and bass and left stereo reverb effects!

 

[black sugar]

DSS3 and xmarcelx have the right idea.


The "karaoke machine" DAW version:

Split the stereo .wav into two mono channels and flip the phase on one.

Since lead vocals are usually mixed right up the middle, you're cancelling it out -- along with everything else that's panned dead center (kick, snare).

This is pretty much going to sound tinny and shitty, but hey, the lead vocal is gone.

Sooo... Throw on a linear phase eq and make a pretty broad high end cut to ease the harshness. Then load in the original stereo .wav and high pass it around 100hz and blend to taste to get back some of the bottom end.

You'll be surprised at what's still there when you do this on a well mixed track. You can really learn a lot about panning, background vox, reverb and delays, etc. The kind of details that make a mix come alive.

 

[xmarcelx]

I made a quick test .. splitted the track in three frequencies:
<150Hz 150-9000Hz >9000Hz (can be more narrow I guess!)
and just put the "center cancel method" (ok a plugin) on the mids! Sounds ok (kick sounds thin and toms are low and a bit phasey etc..) but still lacks a snare!
Maybe you can find a frequency band (with a bandpass) where you at most hear the snare and trigger a new snare from there and mix it to the track

 

[brandy]

black sugar, that is realy a great and usefull description!

Yea, it might be realy interesting what you can "see" when you do some M/S or Voice-Removal stuff. When you take away some masking information.

brandy

 

[moose209]

Depending on the balance between the two channels in mono - you can narrow the range of the 'centre' - sadly though most things are rammed up the centre so you will lose the direct signal for the bass, snare and kick as well - its quite cool for hearing how dirty alot of guitars are these days though and what kind of verb is added to the drums/vox. And if you do it on Lateralus you can hear the guitars gradually go out of tune throughout the album as well as the stereo filed narrow. I wonder if that was on purpose, I reckon they probably had a track order decided before hand, so it could easily have been a concise decision.