Have you ever wished you could remove vocals from a song so you could use the music behind YOUR voice? Perhaps you want to make a CD for a karaoke party, or you just want to try it because it’s cool. Well in this computer age, it is possible (usually) to do just that.
Before I tell you how, I should quickly mention a couple of things. This technique won’t work with every recording you try it on. Much will depend on how the lead vocal was mixed by the original producer. the only 100% guaranteed way to do it perfectly is to have the original tracks to the song (not likely if it’s a popular song). But you can usually get close enough. Also, speaking of the original producer, if you do manage to remove the lead vocal the remaining recording still is under copyright. So a review of copyright law may be prudent if you hope to publish the recording.
Okay! So how can you get this done? First you need audio editing software. If don’t already have your own, try Audacity, which is open source freeware that you can download from the web. For this you’ll also need a plug-in (also free) for Audacity called “Center Pan Remover.” Then you just put that file into the Plugins folder in Audacity. There are instructions on the Audacity website on how to do all this.
Now open Audacity, and open the song from which you want to remove the lead vocal. Next, you’ll notice that the song is a stereo track (has two waveforms, left and right). The reason this process works is that usually, a lead vocal in panned into the center of the stereo field. So if you can somehow isolate and cancel that center part, you can usually remove the lead vocal. For songs where the lead vocal is NOT panned to the center, which isn’t very common, this process won’t work very well. In that case, I recommend trying something like Singing Superstar (and you can download it right now!), which does some amazing things, including removing vocals from your favorite songs on your CDs, mp3s, etc.
All you have to do now (back to the Audacity method) is select the entire song by clicking in the area around the pan and volume controls on the left side of the track, go to the Effect drop-down menu, and choose Center Pan Remover. The default setting ought to work just fine. But if not, undo it and try some different values in the “frequencies above” and “frequencies below” windows. I recommend 250 Hz for frequencies above and 3,000 Hz for frequencies below.
If everything went according to plan, you now have the music without the lead vocal. Now you can sing along with your favorite band.
This doesn’t always work well with Audacity. Other audio editors can do it better, such as Adobe Audition. Just load up the song in the edit window and apply the Center-Channel Extractor effect.
If you don’t have access to Adobe Audition or other high-end editor, try any of the programs out there designed specifically for this purpose, like Singing Superstar.
Have fun!
Learn more cool things to do with your home recording studio with our video tutorials.
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5 Audio Recording Tips For Newbies – Part 1: Stereo Or Not?
The following is a list of 5 really important things about audio recording that would have made my life soooo much easier if I had known them when I started with my first home recording studio. Hopefully this article will be of great benefit to you if you want to learn home recording. This is part 1 in a series.
Since there is so much awesomeness in these 5 audio tips, I’m going to break them into 3 different posts so they can sink in better:).
1. It Is Only Stereo If The Sound From The Left Speaker Is Different From The Sound Coming From The Right
I THOUGHT I knew what “stereo” meant. Heck, when I was a kid that’s what we called our music players. “Hey, turn on the stereo and play some Queen.” It just means coming out of both speakers (left and right), right? Now this may sound silly, but just because you have sound coming from both left AND right speakers does NOT mean you have a stereo signal. Forget about dictionary definitions for a second. THIS is what you need to know: It is only useful stereo if the sound from the left speaker is different from that coming from the right. And get this… to be truly effective that difference must be so slight that we aren’t consciously aware of it!
Let me clarify. If you listen closely through both speakers, you’ll hear that most music has different stuff coming from different sides, like the lead guitar part coming completely from the right speaker, and the rhythm guitar coming completely from the left. If you turn the “pan” button on the stereo all the way to one side or the other, you can’t hear the other guitar at all… or maybe only very faintly. But everyone knows that right? Well that still isn’t really the COOLEST thing about stereo. So “what is?” I hear you cry.
This: a single instrument (or voice) that somehow comes from the speakers with some differences between the left and right parts of the audio, is WICKED cool! You’ve heard us talk about the magic of audio? Well THIS is one of those magical things. An entire chapter (or book) could probably be written about this – and we will go into lots of depth in the tutorials. But the basic idea is that the human brain picks up on differences in sounds on left and right UNCONSCIOUSLY if the differences are subtle enough. This is NOT some freaky-deaky new-age hooey! Modern recorded music (in fact our very survival as a species… but that’s another book) depends on it.
Let’s say you have a recording of a piano that, for some reason, was recorded in mono (maybe you only had one microphone). Even though it is possible to tell your recorder to “record in stereo,” that just means it is going to split the audio into two “identical” sounds, and send one to the right channel and the other to the left channel. This is NOT a stereo signal, based on our definition above. Remember why? Correct! There are no differences in the sounds coming from left and right. If you were to play this recording through headphones, you’d notice piano sound coming from both speakers, but your brain would tell you that there was only one lonely, rather thin-sounding piano, right in front of you.
If you remember your vocabulary, or just read a lot of Readers Digest, you’ll know that the word, “mono” comes from the Greek word, “monos” meaning “single” or “alone,” also meaning “not stereo.” BUT if you take one of the two identical piano signals (one going left, the other going right still), and delay it in time by just 10 milliseconds, you’ll still THINK you’re hearing only one piano, but suddenly it will sound bigger, fuller, nicer. You can increase the delay by up to 40 milliseconds for an even wider sound, and still your brain will think it’s just one single piano that sounds much better than before. THAT is magic (at least I think so)! It isn’t until the two sounds get well over 40 milliseconds apart in time that we start to hear two different and distinct sounds.
Discovering this principle of audio enhanced the quality of my recordings immensely, as it will yours when you learn all the ways you can make use of it. The above example used only “timing differences” to create this man-made (fake?) stereo signal. But other differences like pitch, EQ, etc. can also be used.
Tune in next time for part 2 of 5 Audio Recording Tips For Newbies when I will tell you about why it’s better to record LOUD (just not too loud) and what the heck people mean when they say “EQ.”
Cheers!
Ken
3 Tips For Recording Stereo Voice
There are several ways you can create a stereo effect when recording a voice, like a lead vocal in a song or as an effect in a voice over production. But first, let’s talk about why you might want to do this.
A clean and clear solo voice is the most natural and usually the best way to produce a vocal track. But there are times when you might want to add spaciousness or thicken up the sound of a voice. This effect is used a lot in music recording, often to create an intensity at certain points (like before the chorus) in a song, or even as the primary sound of a particular singer or band. Jon Anderson, from the group Yes, is an example of the latter.
I’ve been listening to The Beatles a lot lately and it seems a huge majority of their songs have the lead vocal coming at you in some sort of stereo, or at least doubled way. By “stereo,” I mean that the part (whether that be a voice or anything else) is actually two versions of itself and sounds as if it is coming at you from various directions as it does in real life. In the case of The Beatles, most of their recordings were produced in mono, so technically the vocal doubling wasn’t stereo. But the techniques they used to get thicker and spacey voices do produce a stereo effect if each of the signals is panned so that one comes from the left channel and the other from the right. In fact, that is exactly what happened when Beatles songs were remixed for stereo versions.
So what are these 3 tips for recording a stereo vocal?
Use 2 Mics When Recording
Of course the most obvious way to present a sound in stereo is to record it that way. Use two microphones to record one voice. This could be done using a stereo microphone (which is really two microphones in one), or two separate mics. Then in order to create the stereo effect, the output of each mic must go to its own track when recorded they can be panned left and right. If they stay together in the center of the mix (not panned at all) the result is a thicker (for lack of a better word) sounding voice like in the Beatles’ mono recordings. This is an effect all its own, called doubling, that is very common these days, but not technically stereo.
Anyway, using two mics for a stereo effect requires one more thing, which is to create a difference between the two recorded signals. This is because two identical signals, even if panned left and right, will still sound like only one un-panned signal coming from in front of you. In real life we take in audio through our ears (yeah, I know – alert the media), which as you have probably noticed, are on opposite sides of our head. Also in real life, sound comes to our ears only after it has bounced off of walls, floors, ceilings, and other surfaces. Each ear receives a slightly different version of the sound, allowing us to determine which direction the sound came from.
So in order to provide our listeners with a slightly different version of the voice for each ear, we have to make sure each mic points at the signal at a different angle. In a stereo mic, each of the two mic capsules point (usually) across the singer’s mouth instead of at it, almost as if the mics were aimed at imaginary people to the left and right of the singer. These two different angles provide the differences we need.
You can do the same thing with two separate mics if you make sure to put them really close together. But another way is simply to separate the mics by a few feet, and then unlike the previous method, point each mic directly at the singer’s mouth. Again, each mic will pick up the voice with different directional information and allow for a stereo sound when panned in the mix.
Sing Twice
The second way is to record the singer singing the part onto one track with one mic, and then record the singer again, singing it a second time (typically using the same mic) and recording this version onto a different track from the first. The differences in performance (subtle timing, breathing, phrasing, differences, etc.) will be more than sufficient for a stereo effect when panned in the mix. The Beatles used this method a lot in the early years prior to 1966.
One drawback of this method is that it sometimes singers don’t like it. John Lennon was particularly critical of doing things this way. He disliked it so much that EMI engineer Ken Townsend invented a way to create a similar effect without requiring the singer to sing twice. This technique came to be known as automatic double-tracking and common in modern recording. Essentially this technique electronically creates a second copy of the voice (or whatever is being recorded) and introduces changes to it that provide the required difference for the stereo effect. And that brings us to the third tip.
Copy The Voice
You can create stereo even if you only have one recorded performance. In today’s computer recording world it is simply a matter of copying and pasting like in a word processor. In Reaper, for example, you can click and drag an audio item while holding down the “ctrl” key and instantly create a copy in a second track. But that isn’t enough is it? Remember that you need to make them different from each other somehow, and then you need to pan them left and right to get stereo. Two copies of the same thing, regardless of how you pan them, is really just the same thing, only louder.
Perhaps the most common way to create the difference we need is to time-shift one of the versions by a slight amount. In most recording programs, simply dragging the audio item left or right in its track will shift it in time. Obviously if you move one of the tracks too much, it will be less stereo, and more of an echo. We’re only looking for a time difference 25 t0 35 milliseconds. It is a fascinating trait of human audio perception that we can hear two things separated in time by that amount and not consciously detect that we are hearing two things. But that small time difference is enough for our unconscious minds to hear a stereo effect if the two tracks are panned left and right.
Besides time-shifting other differences can be introduced, such as timber and tonal alterations to further increase the intensity of the effect. This is taking advantage of something called “The Haas Effect,” which you can read about in our article What Is The Haas Effect?
Use any or a combination of these three techniques for creating a cool stereo effect for a voice – or anything you’re recording for that matter.