Music Mixing

gamerchick39

May 30 2005, 05:40 PM

Ok here is my problem, i love playing around with songs, mixing them together. I use Acid Music 3.0 and pretty much mp3's. I dont have a massive loop library so all i really do are make megamixes of groups and songs i like. Anyway, i wanna branch out and actually remix songs, but i can never find just the words of a song, or a program that can isolate the vocal tracks.

So my question is does anyone know of a free site that has a vocal library, or at least a program that can isolate the vocals. I prefer free or cheap cuz this is just a hobby at the moment

Thanks

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MaryAnneDerEsel

May 31 2005, 12:24 AM

I know of quite a number of people who mix music for a hobby. It's something I'd love to do as well, if I could every get up and get moving on it.
Have you ever tried searching Google? You'd be surprised at what a simple search can bring up.
If that doesn't work, you could try contacting Best Buy and other such stores. I know a guy who has a simple software program he uses to create his music, and each of the instruments and the vocals are seperate. I don't know what it's called, though. Sorry!

The Best Buy folks might be able to tell you, or at least direct you to someone who can.

Also, I've heard a lot of good things about Sibelius. www.Sibelius.com
I've downloaded their free music player (it's for midis

) But they make a lot of products geared toward people like you who are making music at home. You *might* be able to find something there.

I hope that helps.

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gamerchick39

May 31 2005, 03:45 AM

awesome i will try best buy tomorrow, its one of my favorite stores lol so i have no problem doin that

Thanks for the tips

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finaldesign

May 31 2005, 06:54 AM

On the other hand, just what the man said: you could do a Google search while you wait. You may find this keyword interesting: "Vocal cutter"
Or you can visit this link - they have a list of many audio software, maybe you find something interesting.

There is another way. You can remove vocals or extract just them in numerous sound editing programs. A simple equalizer can do the job, but for a little higher quality you must use a program like Wave Lab, Gold Wave, Sound Forge, CoolEdit or similar...
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Here is a simple tutorial for vocal removing / extracting for Sound Forge:
1) Open the audio file.
2) Choose Edit > Select All to select all the data in the file.
3) Choose Process > Channel Converter.
4) In the Channel Converter dialog box, choose the Stereo to Stereo - Vocal Cut preset.
5) If you want to end up with a pseudo-stereo file, no other settings are necessary. If you want to end up with a pseudo-mono file, activate the Invert Right Channel Mix option. Using this option makes the final results sound a bit better.
6) Click OK.
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Here is a tutorial for CoolEdit Pro:
1) Open the audio file.
2) Choose Edit > Select Entire Wave to select all the data in the file.
3) Choose Transform > Amplitude > Channel Mixer.
4) In the Channel Mixer dialog box, choose the Vocal Cut preset.
5) If you want to end up with a pseudo-stereo file, deactivate the New Right Channel Invert option. If you want to end up with a pseudo-mono file, no other settings are necessary. As I mentioned earlier, the mono file sounds better.
6) Click OK.
-----------------------

I hope this little tutorial/info would help you.

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banjosforpeace

May 31 2005, 08:10 AM

QUOTE (gamerchick39 @ May 30 2005, 01:40 PM)

Thanks

You could try Audacity, a free audio editing suite. You can download plugins for it that can do all kinds of things. Like, if you want to take a vocal track out of a song to record your own, get the Center Pan Remover plugin. Load your .wav or mp3 into Audacity, run the plugin and start singing!

There are plugins for almost everything imaginable, a lot are free. You can buy really great high-end plugins that can be used with Audacity, as well.

Also see: http://audacityteam.org/vst/

If you want to post your music online, check out this thread. http://www.astahost.com/index.php?showtopic=5124&hl=

Good Luck!

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Neverseen

May 31 2005, 03:19 PM

Ok, I've seen some right and wrong advices here on how to separate the vocals from the whole song.
In fact it's not that easy as explained by finaldesign. And if you try his method, you'll see that the quality of the result is not good at all. So the best choice would be to download some high quality acapellas. For example, check THIS website. It should help you to find voice samples etc.
Now about the software to make the remix in... Actually I don't know anything about "Audacity", but as seen on the screenshot, it looks quite amateur'ish. One good software I can advice is Cubase SX. It has all you need to compose your own music.
Good luck

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bigredrosen

May 31 2005, 10:47 PM

QUOTE (gamerchick39 @ May 30 2005, 01:40 PM)

So my question is does anyone know of a free site that has a vocal library, or at least a program that can isolate the vocals. I prefer free or cheap cuz this is just a hobby at the moment

Thanks

hey there!

unfortunately there really aren't any programs out there that can simply isolate vocals/guitar/etc ... if you think about it, it's pretty impossible. i use acid too (4.0, but its the same idea) ... as you know, each track is what you actually want to extract. but when you save the project as an MP3, you're mixing the tracks all together into one track. thus, you can't remove just one unless you have the original (such as your ACID file, etc)

bigredrosen

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gamerchick39

Jun 2 2005, 04:03 PM

haha thanks for all of the advice.. im gonna give everything a try this weekend and see what works best for my purpose... looks like a lotta good stuff to try

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illarrestmyself

Jun 3 2005, 07:14 PM

I'm very accustomed to using Cool Edit Pro for music editing, mixing, remixing songs etc. I rely on it for all of my indie recording needs. Cool Edit Pro does have a function to remove vocals, but it seems that you wanted to isolate them, for remixing. finaldesign's tutorial was pretty explanatory on this feature, except the vocalcut utility was under effects, not transform. Shift+Alt+V is a shortcut to the vocal cut utility. To isolate the vocals from the track, first you cut the vocals from the track, then go to effects>noise reduction>noise reduction... and take a profile of the track. Save the profile. Now go back to the noise function and reduce the noise of the original track using the profile you saved (in effect, you are reducing the music). This way is not perfect, but it is quick and is a good start for creating mixes.

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Ocelot357

Aug 17 2005, 03:51 PM

QUOTE (bigredrosen @ May 31 2005, 03:47 PM)

There have been programs that remove vocal and you van use them for other instruments, but they were a glorified EQ section that allowed you to cut out frequencies. The other instruments suffered from the experience. Even the noise reduction software finds the frequency and duplicates it to phase it out, but you still loose a little bit- but that really won't get rid of an instrument. There was a box by roland called the ....VR something or other, that did a whole bunch of stuff like this, but i can't remember everything about it.
The best thing is to get the isolated tracks and mix from there.

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iGuest

Oct 19 2009, 06:16 AM

how to isolate or take out vocals....
Music Mixing

a free program called Audacity can do both just as well as anything else more expensive with songs already mixed together. Most of the time the vocals are mixed so they are in the center as opposed to on one side or the other - but, not always. Songs with a lot of overdubbed vocals or guitars (like Queen) will have the tendancy of having a guitar bending note go from left to right underneath the vocal just for a second. Also, back in the 60's & early 70's they only had 3 tracks in the early 60's & 8 rack just came out in 1970, so if your using say an old beatles song off of SGT Pepper or something...That was only done on 4 track, but they were also the first group to figure out how to avoid running out of tracks with still using 16 different overdubs - when all 4 tracks were filled up, they would mix those levels to where they wanted them & then bounce all 4 tracks onto a track of a second 4 track machine - so they had more room but all 4 things on the new 1 track would be set at those levels permanently. So, older records & the bizarre techniques they used you might not be able to isolate just the drums because bass was probably mixed down to the drum track, etc. That's those wacky beatles, though, very few 60's groups even though about getting that technical - standard was recording backing track live Drums on 1 guitar on 2 bass on 3 vocals on 4 - sorry to over explain it, but look for Audacity & here's a link that talks about how to do it:

http://answers.Yahoo.Com/question/index?qid=20090516210302AAKFR7Y

-reply by gamerchick39

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iGuest

Jun 6 2008, 07:21 AM

Isolate vocals
Music Mixing

Here's something that worked for me

Replying to gamerchick39

If you can (this works best with extended 80's style remixes) find a spot where the verse and chorus are, and find another identical section of the song, where the vocal bits are absent. Copy these into the right channel exactly at the spot where the vocals are. So basically, you end up with an instrumental on the right channel and vocals on the left channel. Then do your invert phase, and it should strip out most everything except for the vocals.

To get a precise edit, you might try doing this in Sonic Foundry ACID where you load the vocal part on one track, and the instrumental part in the other track, beatmap them both, and pan each track to opposite sides. Render the wav then open it in your favorite editor and do a phase cancel.

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