Obtaining/Extracting vocals?

[Codename46]

Hey guys,

I was wondering what software programs exist that do a good job of extracting vocals from mp3s, or whether there are other practical means of extracting or obtaining vocals.

I have often listened to remixes of popular song titles in which I'm sure the remix artist either extracted the vocals or obtained them in some way. I'm sure many original artists (especially the really popular ones) don't make an a cappella version of their songs.

Thanks.

[zircon]

There is no reliable way to "extract vocals", unfortunately. The vast majority of remixes ARE created with a capellas, and in fact the more popular the artist, the more likely they are to have one available. I mean, labels aren't gonna just delete/throw away the sessions when they're done with them.

[Moseph]

Hmm ... I know how to get rid of vocals, but I don't know any good method for extracting them unless you have both a copy of the song with vocals and an identical copy except without vocals.

I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing that the big names who remix pop songs have access to all the audio files from the original mixing sessions -- i.e. they have the unmixed audio files that have just the vocals in them.

[Jens Wulvik]

They do actually extract the vocals from the original song. Let me explain how:

If you have two soundwaves playing at the same time, which are both identical except they are going in the opposite direction, you will
not hear any sound.

Now how it works with extracting vocals:
If you have both the instrumental and the original song playing at the same time, while one of them have been inverted you will only hear the differencies in those two songs, which is the vocal.

By the way, you should have the CD tracks for this, not MP3's as the bad quality of MP3s will give you problems to make this work.

Maybe I explained difficult.....

EDIT: I guess those "professional" remixers ask the producers of the original songs to get the vocal track. I don't really know anything about that business...

[po!]

its impossible to cleanly extract vocals, but you can at least make the background less apparent

you can extract the "center" of the stereo image, which is usually where the vocals reside, and cut out the stuff on the sides. then you can do a bandpass EQ for vocal frequencies. then you can cut off the peaks of the drums (assuming the track hasn't been overly compressed)

of course this alters the vocals quite a bit, but at least it's something.. and could work depending on what you wanna do with it

[Fishy]

Does anyone know of any libraries of vocals that exsist? surely there are some remixer communities who've gathered together a bunch of vocal tracks for remixing purposes.

[Legion303]

acidplanet.com

Also, google "acapellas" and "remix packs" and start downloading.

-steve

[Sengin]

Hmm ... I know how to get rid of vocals

As in, cleanly (so the background sound isn't changed)?

[Moseph]

As in, cleanly (so the background sound isn't changed)?

No, I was talking about the standard karaoke trick where everything in the middle of the stereo field is removed.

The only way I can think of to cleanly remove them is if you have the just the vocal track and it's mixed the same way it is on the full song. Then you could reverse vocal track's phase and combine it with the full song, which would eliminate it.

[dannthr]

...assuming that the sampling and encoding was basically identical.

[Jens Wulvik]

...assuming that the sampling and encoding was basically identical.

Exactly! MP3 will for example usually not help you much....you need the CD tracks to make it sound clean. But if you got both the instrumental and the full song on original CDs, you will get very nice and clean results.

If you don't believe me, try output two version of your own works, and mute an instrument in one of them. Then mix them together, with the phase inverted in one of them.

[dannthr]

And you line up the waveforms right on. :P