Jump to content

How to remove vocals?


Steve the Hero

Recommended Posts

  • Members

It doesn't work like that. It's impossible. All you can do is try to remove the frequency range where the vocals are or do center cancelling but you'll also end up removing large swaths of the instrumental track in the process and you'll get pretty poor results.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
  • Members

 

Thanks guys, I just figured there would be something that you prefer or would recommend as opposed to Google giving me thousands of hits.

 

 

instead of being cheeky listen to what Manipulate has to say. removing the vocals from a song isn't as easy as running it through a program or plug-in. tracks are mastered and mixed to make every part of it blend together into an enjoyable piece of music. all a "vocal remover program" is doing is cutting out a certain frequency which holds primarily the vocals. But your still going to have all the other instruments that are in that frequency range, it is impossible to just single out one noise in a group of multiple noises in the same selected frequency range. It's like taking a picture of a sunset and saying I want to cut out just a precise color red from all the other blended instances of the color throughout the painting.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 5 weeks later...
  • Members

Oops :oops: Should have read the title more carefully.

 

You'd think you could "remove the vocals" leaving just the music, then turn around and subtract that "music only" track from the original, thus removing the music and leaving the vocals. But it doesn't work. The problem is that "vocal removal" doesn't really "remove vocals" - it removes anything panned to the middle by subtracting the right channel from the left channel. Anything that is common to both channels (like vocals, or bass, or kick drum) is removed.

 

Start with a stereo recording with L and R channels.

Subtract R from L to remove centre-panned material and you have a new (mono) channel:

S = L - R

Now go back to your original L and R channels and subtract S from each of them.

L' = L - S = L - (L - R) = R

R' = R - S = R - (L - R) = 2R - L

 

You shuffled the sound around between the two channels but you haven't removed the music.

 

No matter how you twist and squirm there's no way you can do it. "Unscrambling eggs" indeed!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Yeah you can't remove vocals. if you're thinking about those songs you hear with samples where it seems like the backing musical track with no vocals attached, that's actually just clever slicing and editing done before performance. OR, you'll notice when a musician, usually electronic or hip hop artists, release singles, there will be multiple versions, and usually vocal only or music only versions too. that's what singles are for.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...