Isolating a vocal track?

[jabond23]

I wanna do remixes of current songs, but i'm not sure how to about isolating just the vocal track. I know its down through a VST, but i'm not sure what VST i would use for that or how to use. I really wanna be able to techno and/or metal remixes/covers of songs with the isolated vocal track(s).

I'm just wondering if anyone knows how to do this and/or where to find a tutorial on this. Thank you!

[rig1015]

(I didn't look for a tutorial)

Gating my friend. Gate, gate, gate...

Then! NR (noise reduction) to try and cut out any ambiance (scoring from the movie / TV show, sound FX's, etc.)

You can EQ after this to try and compensate for any spectral degridation due to NR, or if the actual track needs it. 3kHz is a magical tonal for vocals.

Of course I'm assuming you are eventually going to run this through some delay and then reverb so that also helps with hiding erroneous sounds from the sample.

Whatever plugs you use for this adventure I recommend a gate with a "hold" feature, and a really hi-quality NR plug. Of course if the sample is crap... well... you can polish it, and then have polished crap.

Hope it helps.

[Harmony]

Well, the best way is to just google for "acapella for XXX", "vocals only for XXX" or something similar and hope to get lucky. If the song is popular, you shouldn't have too big of a problem finding what you're looking for.

Pulling the vocals from the full track is no simple task and you'll never get it as clean as you would with finding the isolated vocals from the recording session. Good luck if you have to go that route.

[Yoozer]

may work too.

Other than that isolating anything is like un-baking a cake back to its original ingredients.

I know its down through a VST

No. A wave editor is of much more use.

[jabond23]

Thank you guys! I'm gonna give your ideas a try. I wanna be able to hard rock/metal versions of popular songs. Like this Katy Perry power metal version: