Sampling

[Anomaly777]

Hello,

Does anyone know of a VST or technique which would allow me to sample/extract a single section from a song such as the guitar or vocals or drums? I would really like to learn how to do this for my own industrial music endeavors.

If not, does anyone know where I could download songs which have already been chopped up into distinct parts?

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks,
Stephen

[Anomaly777]

Also, What would I call a track that has been chopped up into separate arts when I am attempting to search for it?

[memes_33]

its a pretty tough thing to do. you can use eq but that doesn't eliminate everything. sometimes you can use a M-S decoder to eliminate the hard-left & hard-right (so you only hear the "center" channel), but even that's not foolproof. phase & eq are about the only tools you have to isolate parts. i've only heard of a few tracks being released so they're stems are available, so i doubt you'll have much luck there either. and i don't know WTF you are asking on the 2nd question.

[oddstep]

Stems. You'd search for stems... maybe remix packs. New Order.Blue Monday. Studio stems or remix pack.

Dream on, really. better to get in touch with artists and say you want to do a track using elements of theirs. can I have the bassline?

[antarktika]

you're pretty s.o.l. if you're talking about extracting each parts audio into a distinct section, or trying to make industrial music in 2011.

[Anomaly777]

Ha, Industrial will live again.

I was looking for the key words you gave me Oddstep, thank you.

I have been playing around with EQ trying to isolate specific frequencies but this is easier said than done with the EQ 8 and the EQ 3 is pretty drastic.

Thanks for the advice everyone.

[jestermgee]

Getting vocals clear from a track can be accomplished.

1. You need the instrumental for the track which is normally easy for most pop songs
2. You need to invert the waveform
3. You need to mix perfectly the instrumental with the original
4. Playing around a bit you can get almost a clear grab of the lyrics.

Trying to just use filters and eq will give you average results as there is overlap in elements in songs. Like trying to pick all the ingredients out of a cake mix after it's been cooked.

[Warwolt]

Its a bit like trying to get the eggs out of a baked cake, you can't really do it. Some times, you might have some strawberries on the top of the cake that you can pick out, but generally, its impossible to get exactly the same tracks as the source had.

[oddstep]

the cake and eggs thing is right. more to the point - sampling and re eqing edits from whole tracks is way more interesting

[abl385]

Getting vocals clear from a track can be accomplished.

1. You need the instrumental for the track which is normally easy for most pop songs
2. You need to invert the waveform
3. You need to mix perfectly the instrumental with the original
4. Playing around a bit you can get almost a clear grab of the lyrics.

Trying to just use filters and eq will give you average results as there is overlap in elements in songs. Like trying to pick all the ingredients out of a cake mix after it's been cooked.

Nice one! In fact I had never tried it before so I gave it a shot and was quite amazed when I dropped the same track on two channels and phase inverted one of them using Utility.

..silence.. -inf on the meters! Great success!

Then I decided to move on to the next step. I took Trentemøller's 'Moan' from 'The Last Resort' and also its vocal version and repeated those steps. But I failed as I was stricken down to the ground. The timing is correct, so my guess is it's due to the different mixing/mastering of the vocal version. I can tell from how the waveform looks on the arrangement view. (I even tried adjusting the volumes so that they match and also EQ the non-vocal frequencies but I had no luck whatsoever as the whole spectrum is different.)

So how do you solve this?

[jestermgee]

Using the phase invert method should work IF the instrumental/accapella Is an exact copy of the release. It simply cancels out the common data from the song ad leaves behind the rest. Yeah, if the accapella version is not actually the vocals found in the song (which a lot of the time it won't be) then it won't match.

Stems are the gold you need for good remixing but I have done a number of remixes simply by doing the following:

- using eq and other filters to push down the unwanted frequencies
- matching the music to help "override" the frequencies i can't get rid of
- using the phase canceling method

I have remixed:

- War of the worlds
- Eminem - without me
- Eminem - loose yourself
- D12 - purple pills
- Kelise - milkshake
- Daft punk - around the world
- The verve - bitter sWeet symphony
- Gary Jules - Mad world
- Pete Murray - Beautiful
- Inspector Gadget Theme
- Eskimo Joe - Black fingernails red wine DnB Remix
- Eskimo Joe - black fingernails red wine fingered remix
- Jimi Hendrix - Foxy Lady
- Lyrics Borne - Calling Out
- Pantera - Cemetary Gates

Amongst other projects I can't recall at the moment. Happy to show the results of any above if interested. Most were created years ago with older software and techniques and all have been done just for fun.
-

[Cezband]

The utility tool has some interesting ways of sorting the frequencies to try to get a clearer section of what you want. On really old recordings, you can actually get some great results by fiddling with the stereo field (back in the day, you'd find songs with drums and guitars panned all the way to one side and vocals off somewhere else, so it's easier to strip the vocals out.) As has already been stated, there's no magic way to isolate a particular sound, just workarounds.

I for one, believe industrial is due for a comeback if you want to fiddle with some industrial stems, there are a few remix competitions going on at http://www.fixtremix.com at the moment.

[dentaku]

By the way, http://www.acapellas4u.co.uk/ is a good place to look for stems. It can be fun to warp them and make your own mixes.

I grew up with industrial music but it seems to have died when the US music industry demanded more guitars because purely electronic music just seemed too European. It was also a victim of it's own theatrical nature as many bands just got cheesier and cheesier and relied too much on image. The spirit of industrial still lives on, it's just not called industrial anymore.

[anybody human]

The spirit of industrial still lives on, it's just not called industrial anymore.

I'm not an expert on industrial music but this seems spot on to me. It's influence is still around for sure, on a lot of different genres.

[antarktika]

It's all skinny white kids covered in black liquid latex to me, at least nowadays.