removing vocals

billysew

Hi, is there away you can remove vocals from a song and then use the vocals and backing track for somthing else?

Rob_K

This can be done, but the results can be a little strange to say the least..

Very basically, it involves taking one channel (let's say the left) of the stereo field, inverting the waveform, then mixing the inverted waveform with the right channel. This has the effect of cancelling out anything which was placed in the center of the stereo field- which conveniently for us usually means the vocals. The resulting mono waveform will sound a bit strange but may serve the purpose. Unfortunately there is no way to remove the backing track and hear only the vocals.

So how do you do it?

You can fiddle around with an audio editor if you know what you're doing, but the easiest way to do it is to download Winamp for free from www.winamp.com, and then do the following:

1) Launch Winamp
2) Click "options" then "preferences"
3) Click "Plugins - DSP/Effect"
4) Select "Nullsoft Signal Processing Studio DSP v.0.37"
5) Click "Configure active plugin"
6) In the window that appears, click "Load"
7) Select "justin - stupid stereo voice removal"
8) Click "Enable Processing"

Then load your track into wimap and hit play- you'll hear the song without its vocals! Kind of..

Bear in mind that this method isn't completely reliable, and you will probably still hear the reverb from the lead vocals. However, it's the best that can be achieved. Also, try and use the best quality source material as you can- the more compressed the file is, the less it will work.

Hope this helps!