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Janderson

Music editting

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This is probably a stupid question but aside from remaking a song is there any way to remove peices of it, say the vocals or certain instruments?

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There supposedly are certain types of playback equipment which single out an instrument and remove it from the mix. I'm not aware of any software that does this, and I question the quality of any product that claims to do it.

There really is no way to un-mix a song without ruining the sound data.

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You can cut or extend a song but I don't think you can actually remove recordings from the mix. I say that but I think you can remove the lyric tracks from a song because my high school did it. Don't know for sure.

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TheDarkArchon said:

WAV, OGG etc. can't be "unmixed" as all the tracks are merged.

Wasn't sure of that. I though when they formatted it to a wav like normal cd's the separate tracks was packs and couldn't be unpacked.

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Hmm, I see. Too bad.

But hey, to put life support on this thread anybody know of any decent music editting software? I'd prefer it to be free but since my credit card should be making an enterance soon I'm not bothered.

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Janderson said:

is there any way to remove peices of it, say the vocals or certain instruments?


Yes there is. Sonic Foundry SoundForge. Search for that.

I always use it to cut some pesky undesired interludes out of my favourite music.

It edits MP3s, if you get the plug-in for that set up properly.

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If you're talking about individual tracks, no. You can't lift vocals from a CD track and keep the underlying music, or any other instrument. You can play with EQs and kill certain ranges that are more heavily used by one instrument over another, but there's typically damage to all tracks when done like that. When songs are recorded, they're almost always done with each instrument as its own individual track, then compiled later into a single track for burning. Remixers get hold of the individual tracks from the original artist when they want to do their editing. If they don't keep the individual tracks, there's not likely a remix.

If you mean just snipping entire portions of a song, I second SoundForge.

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No, unless it's an old recording.. sometimes they hard pan the vocals to one side.

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Unless you obtain the original tracks, there's not really much hope. I've heard songs with instruments "removed" before and they sounded like crap.

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There are a few Windows audio editors that can accomplish this task, although your results may vary. Try GoldWave or Cool Edit Pro (Google or Yahoo for them), they both have features that can do this.

Here's the way it works (and why the final quality of the results can vary greatly). Most music (especially band type arrangements, with a main singer) are panned/mixed as such that the main singer is directly in the immediate middle of the panning from left to right... in other words, he/she is center-stage. The rest of the band and backup singers are usually to his left and right in the panning.

Cool Edit Pro and GoldWave simply analyzes a stereo WAV file, and then removes the data that is identical in both the left and right channels of the stereo mix... theroetically removing the main solo/melody vocals.

The reason that results may vary greatly from one song to the next is simply the fact that not all songs are mixed precisely like this... with the lead singer in the direct middle of the panned mix, and the rest of the backup singers and band to the left and right.

Some songs work perfectly (I've tried a few that were flawless... just like you had a karaoke (sic?) version of the song <G>), while others result in a "tinny" sounding final WAV that sounds like it's being played out of a tin can (or with strange echo/chorus/flange effects applied to it). If the lead singer's vocals have a lot of reverb applied to them, this compounds this problem, as there are traces/remenants of the reverb effect in both channels (that don't quite match extactly from one channel to the next).

Anyhow, it's quite funny/ironic that you mention this <LOL>, as I was recently playing around with the vocal removal features of Cool Edit pro and GoldWave (day before yesterday). The final clip can be found here (links are case-sensitive), read the text file to find out what it is <G>:

http://www.cmoo.com/~snor/weeds/Stuff/Rich_Weeds_Nagel_-_Sweet_Little_Jesus_Boy.txt

http://www.cmoo.com/~snor/weeds/Stuff/Rich_Weeds_Nagel_-_Sweet_Little_Jesus_Boy.mp3

Note that the final quality of that MP3 isn't any too great, as I used one of those cheap "stub" microphones to record my new vocals, which results in quite poor quality. Although, the removal of Kenny Rogers lead vocals in the original CD-ripped WAV file was flawless -:)

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