Thread: Music Editting Software

I have a track I want to use, but It has lyrics in it and I want to remove the lyrics and put a voice over on it.

What is the but software to download to be able to do this? does anyone know?

Help would be much appreciated.


Love Mocha !!! x

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Short answer - I don't think you can.

It would have to be an extremely complex piece of software that could strip only vocals off a track. The reason for this is that vocals occupy a similar frequency range to other melodic instruments eg. guitars, piano, keyboards etc. It's not the type of sound they make, it's where they sit in the frequency rane, for example, the low rumble of a plane overhead might be at the bottom end of the frequency range, and the whistling of a kettle at the top. Voices, guitars etc. sit in the middle.

So if you wanted to try and "notch out" band of frequencies, which many commercially available music software programs can do, to try and remove the vocals, you'll end up taking out the piano, guitars etc. as well. The software would have to recognise the difference between the timbre of a voice as opposed to a timbre of a guitar, which may seem obvious to the human ear but much more difficult if you have to break it down into binary code for a piece of hardware to process.

You'll need to see if you can find the "music bed" version of the track - the instrumental version, maybe the karaoke version if you can find it? Although those are often crappy re-recordings/MIDI generated covers of the songs rather than the songs themselves. I'm not sure where you might be able to get this though.

Anyone who knows better feel free to chip in btw, this is based on my experience as a sound engineer but I'm not up do date with the latest stuff out there. There may be some super bit of software now on the market that can do this, but I bet it won't be cheap...

Originally Posted by Honey Wilde

You'll need to see if you can find an instrumental version of the track, possibly the karaoke version? I'm not sure where you might be able to get this though.

If you get completely stuck looking for an instrumental version Youtube often has music posted up that you can't find anywhere else - can't hurt to try it! :eyebrows:

As for good sound editing software (although I concur with Honey Wilde that it would simply not be able to handle removing a vocal ) you can download "audacity" for free and it's certainly good enough to handle most sound editing jobs (not to mention the fact that its nice and easy to use )!

Best of luck Mocha - let us know how you get along!

When I've made movies I've managed to achieve this effect if the track is in stereo, as the singer is generally positioned centrally in the soundfield. The way to achieve it is to switch the phase of one of the stereo tracks - the voice, being in the middle is combined with the inverted waveform can (mostly) be cancelled out, although any vocal reverberation that has been applied may still remain.

I use Adobe Audition, but you can do almost everything that will do at no charge using Audacity (free!)

Audacity: Free Audio Editor and Recorder

Good luck

Terry

Originally Posted by piksells

When I've made movies I've managed to achieve this effect if the track is in stereo, as the singer is generally positioned centrally in the soundfield. The way to achieve it is to switch the phase of one of the stereo tracks - the voice, being in the middle is combined with the inverted waveform can (mostly) be cancelled out, although any vocal reverberation that has been applied may still remain.

True, but if you do that you'll also cancel out anything else in the middle, bass guitar and kick drum for example which are also instruments generally positioned in the middle of a soundfield.

This will also only work if the track was recorded as a multi-track, which will be the case for most commercial music but won't necessarily work for anything that was recorded as a single stero track for a "live" feel, as acoustic music can be.

Originally Posted by Honey Wilde

True, but if you do that you'll also cancel out anything else in the middle, bass guitar and kick drum for example which are also instruments generally positioned in the middle of a soundfield.

This will also only work if the track was recorded as a multi-track, which will be the case for most commercial music but won't necessarily work for anything that was recorded as a single stero track for a "live" feel, as acoustic music can be.

Hi Honey!

That is 100% true, but as you'll be singing over the top it will probably be acceptable. The well known British DJ Kenny Everett, who I had the pleasure to meet at his home studio, used to use this to good effect on his BBC programmes.