How to Seperate Vocals to make a remix of a song.

[Arsene]

I need some help, i've been looking for this for a long time, still didn't found out, i'd like to try to make a drumnbass remix of this song: Toro Y Moi - Talamak.
Now, the question is, what lot of peaple are having problems whit, is how to I seperate vocals, bass, beat and whatever. I got audacity, fruity loops, ableton and acid pro, so maybe if i can split shit up whit one of those software's.

Thanks, Arsene.

[jaydot]

Good luck with that, most "DIY" acapellas that I've got in the past sound quite bad- unless you know what you're doing with EQing everything out where neccessary... There is software out there but it's a needle in a haystack to find freeware/decent stuff, but search on google nonetheless

[Sine69]

I've tried doing this before. All the videos I found said to find the song you want, then find an instrumental. Take the instrumental version, and invert it.
Apparently, if you play them together the inverted instrumental will phase out the original song. I tried it once, but it didn't work. Maybe I just did something wrong though. idk

Your best bet is probably to try to find a studio acapella though

[blinx]

Save your time and energy man.. like poster above i to have done the inverted instrumental thing and it will just not work. There is no easy way to split vocals out, unless you know someone who works at the studio that tracked the original song and they feel like getting you a master of the vocal tracks by them selves.

I would just get some local to sing the track for you and record them doing so. THis way you have your own clean VIP vocal for your crazy ass remix and the quality will be superb. I noticed alot of gusy who "sample" lyrics and hooks are actually jsut doing this these days. Record the lyrics with someone else's voice and bam clean vocals all day baby. ALL DAY.

[RandoRando]

I got some interesting results with a fucked up headphone cable, anyone ever experience this? It's my casette to iPod adapter, has a headphone out, I have to wiggle the cable to Make it work, but when it's messed up, it complete strips vocals from a song and all I hear isthe beat. Or on dubstep. All I will hear is the wobble. It's very odd.

[MikkiFunk]

ike poster above i to have done the inverted instrumental thing and it will just not work.

It sometimes does work, it won't isolate the vocal completely but it gives you something to work with. Making the best out of what you have to work with and not worrying about everything being perfect etc, is what cuts the men from the boys, IMO.

I have a good tutorial of this on my youtube channel. You'll see that the result I ended up was definitely not perfect, but it still gave me something to work with. It's not a dubstep track or anything, but the genre of music is irrelevant, as long as you can apply that technique to what YOU are working with. Check it out, some good tips:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLGZU5aWmjc

Hope its of some help!

[Arsene]

But how does a dubstep producer make remixes of a song when it's so hard to seperate stuff.

[-[2]DAY_-]

they don't.....

if someone's officially remixing a song, they were given the stems from the original recording. otherwise its what's known as a "bootleg". and to make one you have to look for solo'd elements of the track u wanna remix, and take what u can get, use what u find useful. ORRRRR, you could just start writing your own music.

no one wants a remix, tbqf, unless you've proved yourself as an artist and are known to have some spark that could be brought to an existing tune. then people will start asking you to remix their stuff

[Redderious]

But how does a dubstep producer make remixes of a song when it's so hard to seperate stuff.

When producers that plan on selling/mass distributing remixes they have made, they need permission from the artist. Or atleast the record company. Now if they are big enough, they most likely have the ability to grab the vocal recording from the studio it was made in. They want quality vocals to work with, and DIY acapellas aren't the best way to find that quality.

But ofcourse also keep in mind, they are *Professional* music producers for a reason. They might actually have the skills to extract a nice clean vocal track.

[Manic Harmonic]

Its nearly impossible, its an art form in itself... I have no idea how girl talk does it, that stuff just blows my mind. Your best bet to make an acapella is to use a mid side converter like brainworx solo. I think they make it as vst and au for both windows and mac but im not sure. There's plenty of others though. Im struggling with the same thing right now. But basically vocals are often panned to the center, so with a mid side separator you can solo the center channel. It doesn't work very good but sometimes you can get lucky. That, along with eq and noise reduction MIGHT get you close.

[MikkiFunk]

Fuck mid-side seperators, you would still end up with all the other shit that is panned in or near the centre e.g. Piano, keyboard, bass, kick, snare etc. Phase Inversion (like I and several others said...), + EQ is the closest you're going to get to doing a DIY acapella. That is the only way to do it, there is no 'magic' way to do it.

[Manic Harmonic]

Yeah like I said, it doesn't work that great but its pretty much the best option if you can't do phase inversion. I ahavent been able to find an instrumental for any song I've tried to do it with.

[Toric]

I've tried doing this before. All the videos I found said to find the song you want, then find an instrumental. Take the instrumental version, and invert it.
Apparently, if you play them together the inverted instrumental will phase out the original song. I tried it once, but it didn't work. Maybe I just did something wrong though. idk

Your best bet is probably to try to find a studio acapella though

Yes! That is how you do it! I remembered a thread from a couple of days ago because of this comment.

Here, you may find some help in this thread as well!

http://www.dubstepforum.com/viewtopic.p ... 7#p2421604

[Manic Harmonic]

maybe i'm just trying to use the wrong songs, but where would be the best place to find the instrumental you want? i've had inspirations from time to time to do mashups but i can never find an acapella or an instrumental of either of the songs.

[samkablaam]

import your song into daw. use the vocal separate vst.

then use the riff machine. make sure the wobs on.

kick 1 snare 3.

release.

[brettheaslewood]

I've tried doing this before. All the videos I found said to find the song you want, then find an instrumental. Take the instrumental version, and invert it.
Apparently, if you play them together the inverted instrumental will phase out the original song. I tried it once, but it didn't work. Maybe I just did something wrong though. idk

Your best bet is probably to try to find a studio acapella though

dont quote but upon reading into this before.
and this is going on memory.

follow the steps mention about instrumental & original mix.
then i think, you highlight the instrumental.
then open effects and noise canceller, then i think you need to set the instrumental as the profile.
then noise cancel the original mix, so it strips the instrumental from the original mix.


it's something like that anyway,but the idea of stripping down a track via noise cancelling sounds awfull.
but give it a shot if you're desperate to remix that tune.

[-[2]DAY_-]

girl talk doesn't separate elements of songs from full mixes.. tbh no one really does that. they either get the stems or they make bootlegs. Girl talk makes bootlegged mashup. He isn't concerned with separating elements. he just builds his music with whatever snippets he can find/use and really doesn't process them at all. Just layers and sequences bits n bobs from songs, sometimes whole passages. but its always the full mixes unless he's got accapellas/instrumentals that are commercially available. . he's good at that shit but i hate mashup...

[Ldizzy]

theres a saying about that that circulates

u can't unbake a cake.

older older vinyl releases have certain instruments / the vocals hard panned, and it allows u to separate things a little more easily, a lot of club releases also included an acapella.. most of them got ripped off and put on the internet, but its an overstatement to say everything is on the internet, there's awhole lot of stuff u could find by digging in the crates...

for more recent releases, see above..

[iamjoncannon]

I think burial exploits the stereo image. I fiddled around with the song that the beyonce voice in "distant lights" and managed to get a lot of it through eqing out the sides. Waves sells this "center" plug in that basically amps the voice in the center of the stereo field which some studio techs use the make it sound better on the radio. I think burial reverse engineered that production technique by taking out the sides and using a mid side eq. The vocals from that ray j song and whatever song is in "shell of light" have the same "center amping." Just an idea to play around with.

[Ldizzy]

i dont know the cat personally, but for some reason, i really think you overestimate burial's sampling ethics..

something tells me the cat is more about sounding like his environment, ressources, etc...

is there ms processing provided with soundforge?