VOCAL EXTRACTION METHODS

o yea is it true if u play a inverted pan expaned song with like a cd player and record it with a seperate mic, can u get a acapella that way. just bye pulling out the head phone plug a little bit and ajust it right to hear more vocals. am i right. cuz i heard and found this out on my own experince on gybo.

[quote quote="TiMG":36v0c4ye]..

p.s. r u on speed?[/quote:36v0c4ye]

what a classic, pissed meself when I read that Tim..

sorry to whoever it is that Timg’s comment was based towards..

[size size=75:36v0c4ye](runs away buckled over, still laughin’)[/size:36v0c4ye]

You methods were very informative, I’ve never tried that before. I’ve always used reverse phasing to get rid of standing waves in clubs but never to make an acapella. I will definitely try it. Also, Numark’s CDN 88 and CDN 90 dual cd players have an ISO effect that you can use the wheel to eliminate certain frequencies. This works with some songs..

never thought of it like that, its quite simple really. Its like if you have two speakers and the negotive and positive swapped on one they sound really quiet. I spent ages trying to figure why my stereo was so quiet when i was younger, anyway thats beside the point i’ll shut up now.

Thanks for the advice i always wondered how i can get the vocals out of tracks.

well i have done the inversion pan expand process, and looped and matched the instrumental under the vocals. and some noise reduction bye captering the noise of my loop, with a little bit of amplifying the vocals. and some more pan expanding afterwards, graphic EQ, to have more presens of the vocals, and if course i used the knockout plug-in, and the specterlizer from sound hack, includding the vocal enhancer, i gotten pretty much the snare and the rest of the instrumental out of my acapella. i used a chorse producer from dub master. my only down fall is that it sounds good but, the qaulity isnt that great, it sounds like he is to low, and i have to turn up the volume to hear him better. but when i do that it sounds like the speakers are gana blow, like he is too loud. its a good one i made, but the vocal quality is just a little bad. i was thinking how i can enhance it, or to fix it. i think that i am doing somthing wrong in the noise reduction. but any wayz the process would be alot easyer and simpler if there was a real time program that can make good enough instrumentals just to get most of the acapella out when going through knock out. i would let u hear the acapella i did but i just need to upload it on this page or another to have u guys hear it. and make suggestions. thanks.

marcicano wrote:

well i have done the inversion pan expand process, and looped and matched the instrumental under the vocals. and some noise reduction bye captering the noise of my loop, with a little bit of amplifying the vocals. and some more pan expanding afterwards, graphic EQ, to have more presens of the vocals, and if course i used the knockout plug-in, and the specterlizer from sound hack, includding the vocal enhancer, i gotten pretty much the snare and the rest of the instrumental out of my acapella. i used a chorse producer from dub master. my only down fall is that it sounds good but, the qaulity isnt that great, it sounds like he is to low, and i have to turn up the volume to hear him better. but when i do that it sounds like the speakers are gana blow, like he is too loud. its a good one i made, but the vocal quality is just a little bad. i was thinking how i can enhance it, or to fix it. i think that i am doing somthing wrong in the noise reduction. but any wayz the process would be alot easyer and simpler if there was a real time program that can make good enough instrumentals just to get most of the acapella out when going through knock out. i would let u hear the acapella i did but i just need to upload it on this page or another to have u guys hear it. and make suggestions. thanks.

what song did you do?

here is an email that i just wrote to my friend…it could help some of you understand the basic idea of phase inversion as well (and i would be glad if more knowledgeable types could point out mistakes or possible improvements — thanks!):

…an interesting musical riddle for you, mark:

go to http://www.streamload.com/johndoe99 — you will find three sound files with these names: Lyrics&Music.aif, LyricsOnly.aif, and MusicOnly.aif…download all of these (it’ll be worth the time) and then:

1. line them all up directly next to one another in ACID so that they start and stop at precisely the same time.
2. press play. you should find that no sound whatsoever comes out (if there is any sound, adjust the volume of MusicOnly.aif — it might paradoxically have to be a bit higher than either of the other two in order to achieve complete silence)…how could this be?
3. now simultaneously mute both of the “Only” tracks, leaving only Lyrics&Music.aif playing — you should hear a ridiculous and very stupid remix of “Hollaback Girl” (mixed with “The Rhythm of the Night” and then some jungle music). why does this play only when the other two are muted?
4. here’s where the c-razy stuff happens. unmute LyricsOnly — which really DOES possess only the lyrics, which you can prove if you listen to it with both of the other tracks muted. why then — when the LYRIC tracks are doubled, would only the MUSIC play?
5. finally, mute LyricsOnly again and unmute MusicOnly (so that MusicOnly and Lyrics&Music should be playing together) — since you are so immune to shock now, you will not be surprised to find that somehow doubling up the MUSIC track has resulted in only the VOCALS playing.

“WTF, d00d?” you are surely asking.

let me explain, my befuddled friend. i discovered this trick in the process of re-learning Sound Forge…i’ve never had any idea what this useless “invert” function did or why you would ever in god’s name use it, so i looked up a lot of information…and it turns out that it opens up incredible possibilities.

basically “invert” turns a sound file into its exact opposite — don’t ask me how the hell this works or why when you listen to this “opposite,” it sounds the same as the original in almost every regard…the important and intriguing part is that when you mix an original sound and its inverse together in equal proportions, you get complete silence — the result of adding positive and negative, -1 and 1: zero!

this opens up incredible possibilities because it means that you can literally extract precisely the same vocal track that an artist recorded in the studio from a mixed product, so long as you have an exact instrumental version of the track (which is often included on the singles, etc). how this would work is fairly simple: you just inverse the entire instrumental track and mix it precisely on beat (it has to be accurate within about 1/1000 of a second to work) with the full version (lyrics + instruments both)…the inverse of the instrumental lined up exactly with the actual instrumentation in the full version will completely cancel out the backing music…and all that will be left is the only thing that has not been cancelled out: the lyrics. get it?

i am pretty excited about the possibilities — it seems like as long as you can find a reliable instrumental track, you can remix literally anything. mp3s are generally too unreliable to use for this purpose, but exact CD copies do well…i’m going to start pulling out all of those terrible dance single 10-cent cd’s we used to get at the record exchange and pull the lyrics out of them.

until the next episode,
-matt

aiight number 1 of the DIY’s works a treat, if you mix it down and then play around with the EQ it sounds sorted most of the time.

Thanks for all this, a lot of info but something for me to get started on!

[quote quote="johndoe99":qozb9hdl]here is an email that i just wrote to my friend…it could help some of you understand the basic idea of phase inversion as well (and i would be glad if more knowledgeable types could point out mistakes or possible improvements — thanks!):

…an interesting musical riddle for you, mark:

go to http://www.streamload.com/johndoe99 — you will find three sound files with these names: Lyrics&Music.aif, LyricsOnly.aif, and MusicOnly.aif…download all of these (it’ll be worth the time) and then:

1. line them all up directly next to one another in ACID so that they start and stop at precisely the same time.
2. press play. you should find that no sound whatsoever comes out (if there is any sound, adjust the volume of MusicOnly.aif — it might paradoxically have to be a bit higher than either of the other two in order to achieve complete silence)…how could this be?
3. now simultaneously mute both of the “Only” tracks, leaving only Lyrics&Music.aif playing — you should hear a ridiculous and very stupid remix of “Hollaback Girl” (mixed with “The Rhythm of the Night” and then some jungle music). why does this play only when the other two are muted?
4. here’s where the c-razy stuff happens. unmute LyricsOnly — which really DOES possess only the lyrics, which you can prove if you listen to it with both of the other tracks muted. why then — when the LYRIC tracks are doubled, would only the MUSIC play?
5. finally, mute LyricsOnly again and unmute MusicOnly (so that MusicOnly and Lyrics&Music should be playing together) — since you are so immune to shock now, you will not be surprised to find that somehow doubling up the MUSIC track has resulted in only the VOCALS playing.

“WTF, d00d?” you are surely asking.

let me explain, my befuddled friend. i discovered this trick in the process of re-learning Sound Forge…i’ve never had any idea what this useless “invert” function did or why you would ever in god’s name use it, so i looked up a lot of information…and it turns out that it opens up incredible possibilities.

basically “invert” turns a sound file into its exact opposite — don’t ask me how the hell this works or why when you listen to this “opposite,” it sounds the same as the original in almost every regard…the important and intriguing part is that when you mix an original sound and its inverse together in equal proportions, you get complete silence — the result of adding positive and negative, -1 and 1: zero!

this opens up incredible possibilities because it means that you can literally extract precisely the same vocal track that an artist recorded in the studio from a mixed product, so long as you have an exact instrumental version of the track (which is often included on the singles, etc). how this would work is fairly simple: you just inverse the entire instrumental track and mix it precisely on beat (it has to be accurate within about 1/1000 of a second to work) with the full version (lyrics + instruments both)…the inverse of the instrumental lined up exactly with the actual instrumentation in the full version will completely cancel out the backing music…and all that will be left is the only thing that has not been cancelled out: the lyrics. get it?

i am pretty excited about the possibilities — it seems like as long as you can find a reliable instrumental track, you can remix literally anything. mp3s are generally too unreliable to use for this purpose, but exact CD copies do well…i’m going to start pulling out all of those terrible dance single 10-cent cd’s we used to get at the record exchange and pull the lyrics out of them.

until the next episode,
-matt[/quote:qozb9hdl]

Great info john, but we already know that putting and instrumental with the original song leaves the vocals, has to be exact though. The other info is good though. PS.
Let us now how you get on with the dance cd´s if it works straight off cd ok.

I’ve been using the Knockout plugin for alot of my remixes and it does a decent job most of the times.