Removing voice from a song

[InvisibleGriffin]

I rap and I find it difficult to find songs that are even close to what they used to be. But umm...some of the beats out there are really nice and I'd like to do something with them. Is there a way, using ableton suite, to strip the vocals from a song and then record over the bare instrumental?

[justin]

the basic answer is no. here's 2 ways i can think of attempting it and most likely failing to get something useful:

1. applying a notch EQ around the frequency range of the voice will impact other musical elements, making the mix sound crappy.

2. u could also try to get the original voice stem and do a phase cancellation, but my guess is that wouldnt work too well either. the stem is un-processed whereas the final mix is likely to have EQ and compression on the final mix bus... so it's very likely that it will not cancel out. even if it did it would probably still have an adverse effect on the mix.

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its probably be easier to try and get hold of an instrumental version, or to write one yourself!

[dancerchris]

There is a method, I forget exactly the sequence but it involves doing a phase offset with the L and R channels and then summing them to cancel the common signal (vocals are usually inserted with no panning). This is similar to the phase cancelling trick that people use to compare the summing engines for DAWs. There are still residual vocal sounds but they are muted and garbled. Some of this can be removed with additional notch filtering. Unfortunately a lot of the original signal is lost as well.

There is really no way to completely remove all trace of the vocals ( unless you have the multi track version of the song.)

[Tone Deft]

one way
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYO7Fj5BORM

it's really hit or miss. it's like taking the egg out of a cake after you bake it.

there are other youtubes showing other methods.

the trick is getting the original material lined up VERY VERY precisely with the raw vocals.

TBH it's not done successfully very often.

[Bagle]

just download or buy the instrumental, often CD singles have the main track and 2 others one of them is often the instrumental, or you could create your own beats, buy your own beats or work with people who make beats in your area
got any of your songs online?

[wasoota]

Photosounder does pretty well depending on the track (i.e. how 'visible' the vocal element comes out in the visualisation). It's not exactly cheap for commercial use ($150 or so), but it's aiming to be kind of a photoshop for audio and getting pretty close. If it's a one-time thing maybe ask someone who has it to do the isolation for you?