Free sw to mute voice track from music cd

Oink

Hi All,

I 'd like to submit this to all you educated folks out there. I like to write my own (music) scores for my favourite songs, instead of buying sheet music from the shop. It means I have to listen to the song over and over, and it would help if I could mute the voice track, karaoke style.

I don't do this very often, so I'm not going to buy a proper software. Does anybody know a piece of sw like that ?

I'm guessing it would be some sort of basic mixing table ? Ideally I wouldn't have to convert the files to MP3 or midi first. But on I won't be too picky for my post here 'll settle for any advice at all.

Thanks.

snappieT

This is quite difficult to do, and often results in muffling as least some frequency range of the actual instruments, but http://mp3-player.audio4fun.com/mp3-music-editor.htm should do the best that can be done. Perhaps you could just use midi files that have been made already, download the sheet music (free), or source an instrumental version of the song in question.

This process really isn't worth your while.

Ianaldo

You could look into using Cool Edit Pro aswell, not a bad bit of software and relatively easy to get used to!

squibs

It probably won't work. The vocal is a part of the stereo recording, and you might as well try to separate a cake into flour and eggs.

The tools that are out there usually rely on the vocal being panned dead center. They use phase cancellation to remove the vocal. The main problem with this kind of tool is you'll also lose everything else that is panned in the middle - bass is usually in the middle. You'll also have degradation on anything that isn't panned hard right and left.

If you are determined, go look on the web for the people who produce acapellas (vocal only tracks) from hit singles, so they can do their own remixes using the vocal. They have some other tricks up their sleeves involving EQ, smoke and mirrors.

cregser

Well I think you've been given your answer. But I've done this stuff in college so I'll have my say anyway

The voice track is not encoded into the CD. Only the producer has the original voice track and other tracks (such as lead guitar etc.). The cake analogy above explains how they're all thrown together on the two tracks/channels of a stereo CD.

It is possible to muffle the vocals slightly using something like the WinAmp Equalizer (pic). You've probably used it before (I know I did for ages without knowing what it actually did). Human hearing is sensitive to different frequencies (pitch). We hear between the range 200Hz to 20,000Hz, but speech is only in the range 200Hz to about 8,000Hz. So on the WinAmp Equalizer (pic) you'd lower the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th bars (310Hz to 6kHz). So anything in those frequency ranges would be muffled/cancelled-out but everything else would be unaffected.

Unfortunatly the 1kHz-6kHz range is also where human hearing is most sensitive. So you'll be painfully aware of the difference from the original sound.

BTW, I think the winamp equaliser only works with mp3s, not CDs. Because mp3 splits up music into all these frequency bands that humans are more or less sensitive to. So you'd have to encode in mp3. Not entirely sure though as I haven't used WinAmp in a little while.

Oink

Thanks very much people, I'll see what I can do with that.
I'm trying to work out the piano part for some of Rufus Wainwright's songs, to find a decent arrangement for guitar. Hours of fun in perspective.