I need help isolating vocals from a song

[Projekt N]

Hi I'm working on a song right now and in parts of my song I wanted to put vocal samples from another song in but I am having trouble isolating the vocals from the song. I have an instrumental and the whole song, and I tried the invert one and line them up to kill the music but I was having trouble doing it and I wrestled with it for a good two hours and got frustrated and fed up. I was wondering if any of the more experienced producers/remixers here who have had experience doing this could isolate the vocals for me. No need to cut samples though I can do that part myself. I'd really really appreciate the help a lot. Thanks in advance. I'll provide the files below.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=FQU3G9TN

[deadly_habit]

good luck
diy acapellas are a pain in the ass unless the instrumental and orig are on the same cd and not dodgy rips

[DJ Crackle]

Yeah, there's no reason to struggle for two hours. They're either the same wave form, and it'll work, or not exactly the same, and it won't work.
Not that way at least. I've heard people talk about other ways, but that's the only one I know anything about.

[Sound Drifter]

Hmm. Not sure what editor you use, but Voxengo has plugin called msed. You can use this plugin to drop the sides out of the mix that has the vocals in it. This is mid-side processing. If you drop the sides out, you should have a fairly clear vocal since vocals are usually pretty center in a mix. There may be song artifacts laden in the vocals. If so, try some creative eq carving.

Good luck.

[amphibian]

Hmm. Not sure what editor you use, but Voxengo has plugin called msed. You can use this plugin to drop the sides out of the mix that has the vocals in it. This is mid-side processing. If you drop the sides out, you should have a fairly clear vocal since vocals are usually pretty center in a mix. There may be song artifacts laden in the vocals. If so, try some creative eq carving.

Good luck.

Good eq'ing out of elements in a track needs a fairly sophisticated eq plugin and/or eq board that allow you to have as many eq points as necessary.

[AL4228]

EQ can do it for you. You'll never get a clean acapella though unless you contact the label or person who has the split tracks (beat/vocal)

[Basic A]

What tune are you trying to get us to isolate?

no noones gonna do the work for you, but if you tell me what you want, I might be able to make you one of those nifty 'let me google that for you' pages.

[Sound Drifter]

Good eq'ing out of elements in a track needs a fairly sophisticated eq plugin and/or eq board that allow you to have as many eq points as necessary.

To a degree. It all really depends on what you want for end result. Any kind of process like this is going to sacrifice the sound of the vocal anyway. The type of eq to be more-so careful with is linear-phase eq's doing narrow notches. In heavy transient situations you will get a ringing effect if the transient's decay is too short to hide it.

A lot of other cleanup could be using a gate keyed off the prominent frequency where the vocal dwells or by manually keying it using midi if the gate supports it. Reverse processing the a gate function yields a smoother response most times. A gate like Golden Audio Gate supports midi keying. You can use a reverb dwelling in the eq regions you want to hide to smooth them out. It will help the vocal to stand out in front of it.

... that's just my thoughts. Being creative. Sounds like a lot of work to be honest but worth it if you really want those vox.... let the fun begin.

[-[2]DAY_-]

I heard somewhere that if you have the instrumental, you can invert the phase then layer it with the original track and the result would be the bare vocal as the rest of it would cancel out. I have never tried it.

[Projekt N]

I heard somewhere that if you have the instrumental, you can invert the phase then layer it with the original track and the result would be the bare vocal as the rest of it would cancel out. I have never tried it.

Yes that is what I was doing. Thinking on it though I don't think the waveforms match completely because I tried again and got it to cut out briefly for one part of the song then it all came back

[jaydot]

Have a look on acapellas4u.co.uk for the track. Unless it's obscure and not on there in which case I can't help you.

[Ldizzy]

ive recieved accapellas from artists i wrote to...

some say fuck off some say nothing some send u a file u could never recreate with a mouse / exaggerated dose of hope

[Projekt N]

ive recieved accapellas from artists i wrote to...

some say fuck off some say nothing some send u a file u could never recreate with a mouse / exaggerated dose of hope

Thanks I'll remember that for next time. I already completed the song, I just had to be creative with what I could do and it worked out fine

[Basic A]

I heard somewhere that if you have the instrumental, you can invert the phase then layer it with the original track and the result would be the bare vocal as the rest of it would cancel out. I have never tried it.

Yes that is what I was doing. Thinking on it though I don't think the waveforms match completely because I tried again and got it to cut out briefly for one part of the song then it all came back

One is probably just pitched. Shit happens to me all the time, except when I mix. Certain devices read bpm's a little differntly, some have rumble (microscopic up/down pitch descrepencies) ect. In the mix it makes it a bitch to beatmatch my cdjs to the pc, but Im willing to bet something has happened along the lines thats shifted it.

Also.

Are you sure theres no latency silence at the begginning of either of them? I know I can see different lengths on intros for different audio engines, all depends on how signal is handled. Worth trying to chop them off though, theyll ruin any phase invert attempts you have.

Keep in mind though man, if your instrumental is a 320 and your track your trying to treat is a 192, youll never get it done.

[tripwire22]

What tune are you trying to get us to isolate?

no noones gonna do the work for you, but if you tell me what you want, I might be able to make you one of those nifty 'let me google that for you' pages.

i lol'd for some reaseon on that google reference

[collige]

The original + instrumental method never works. I couldn't even do it with the official tracks+instrumentals from the Pinch album.

[deadly_habit]

The original + instrumental method never works. I couldn't even do it with the official tracks+instrumentals from the Pinch album.

it works they just have to be direct sources with no compression on em and perfectly lined up
if you try it with mp3s or other other compressed formats it's not going to work
like if i wanted to i could pull out my copy of cannibal oxstamentals and cold vein cds and do it, but mp3s of em wont