Removing vocals! (Found on the old board)

[Tael]

Posted by Clockdug:

How vocal cuts work

Ok, it may help users of ALL programs if we talk about how vocal cuts are done. We used to do them before digital editors were invented by cutting and splicing just a couple of wires; there’s no real magic to it.

First, stereo files have 2 tracks (1 for the left channel and 1 for the right). Music tracks do not have the vocals on 1 channel and the music on the other; that’s a trick used in the prod room to allow more mono tracks to be used. You then can mono out the results and get a final version. We used to do that before we had digital multitracks to cut commercials in crappy prod rooms.

Back to the stereo track. In MOST stereo songs, the instruments are panned to the left and right to give some depth to the feel. The vocals are almost always dead center. When you move the singer to the left or right the audience complains that the song sounds weird. This lets us do some physics tricks to the song. Remember in science class how 2 waves that are opposite each other cancel each other out? We’re going to use that.

1. Most programs have a feature to invert the soundwave. Take the song and invert the wave of JUST THE LEFT CHANNEL. Leave the right channel alone; we want them out of phase.

2. Convert the entire stereo track down to a mono file. Most programs have an easy way to do this. The vocals should have dropped in volume a lot; maybe even entirely.

Since the instruments are panned to the left and right, they have different waves on the left and right tracks. Since the vocals (on MOST stereo songs) are in the center the waves are the same in both left and right tracks, and cancel each other out when out of phase. This is what goldwave or Cooledit both do with the vocal cut features. It only works on stereo songs, and doesn’t always work well. It doesn’t work at all on mono songs, even if you convert them to stereo, that just copies the same mono wave into both tracks.

I found this pretty useful, and I'm sure other people did too. As you can see, it's not program-specific, and it's not always going to work, but, hey it's another option.

Gryphon

[Tali]

Aw I love your avatar. That's some pretty good advice.

[Azuma-san]

Well, I didn't tried to do it but it seems to work completly.
I'll try to do it later but I'm sure that there's a better way
to destroy the voices in songs.

Anyway, it's a good tip.
Thank you!!

[Chanteru-chan]

I found this to be a lot of help! ^__^ Thank you so much for the information!

[Hika Yagami]

What program did you usually do this from?

Hika Yagami

[Yugure]

this would have been better advice if ANY of my programs allowed inversion of the sound waves.

Thanks though, I'll keep it in mind if I ever do get a program that allows it

[Azure]

I don't think the writer can help you need inversion to help it work. Audacity has it and it's free >3

[Yugure]

I don't think the writer can help you need inversion to help it work. Audacity has it and it's free >3

true, but Audacity doesn't like my music. whenever I try to put music from a CD in Audacity it makes a very loud internet modemn log on/ snow sound in my face.

[Radiant Paws]

Pardon the bump, but I might need thorough step-by-step help with this xD *Computer challenged*

I would invert the left channel, but not sure how to convert it to a mono file (on Audicity). Goldwave's a bit more complicated IMO.

[mentalstrike]

I don't think the writer can help you need inversion to help it work. Audacity has it and it's free >3

really? Then you gotta tell me how to do this cause in the audacity that I have, it only allows you to invert both tracks at the same time...am I doing something wrong?
EDIT: I figured it out but now I can't get it to go mono