OT: is there a contraption for cancelling vocals from a song?

[Bryan212]

I have a Tascam cd trainer which allows you to slow down songs while maintaining pitch. It is really great for learning guitar solos where there are no vocals over the music. But it doesn't work so well for learning parts where vocals are, as the vocals are usually at the forefront and overpower the guitar parts. So I was wondering if there's something similar to the Tascam where you can pop in and cd and remove or reduce the vocals?

[arm]

Yes. Google voice cancelling software. It's used to create karaoke tracks. You'll probably have to convert sound files to mp3 first though.

We just bought a new Behringer mixer for our PA system and it has this facility built in, it appears to be a hardware solution, you just press a button. The idea is you can input CD audio containing vocals and it strips them out, so you can sing along to the track.

Both of these require the vocals to be panned dead centre though.

[SprintBob]

Is there an app for the iPad that does the same thing? I use Amazing Slow Downer for slowing or speeding up songs while maintaining (or I can change pitch) just like Arm does. I'd be interested in the ability to playback a specific song and remove the vocal parts. Thanks!

[MikeBmusic]

Note that most of these 'vocal cancelers' mute everything that is panned dead-center, not just the vocal.

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by Bryan212

I have a Tascam cd trainer which allows you to slow down songs while maintaining pitch. It is really great for learning guitar solos where there are no vocals over the music. But it doesn't work so well for learning parts where vocals are, as the vocals are usually at the forefront and overpower the guitar parts. So I was wondering if there's something similar to the Tascam where you can pop in and cd and remove or reduce the vocals?

Hi Bryan…
I used to have a piece of software which would reverse phase on half a stereo signal and kill the 'centered' vocal. Of course that depends on the main vocal being centered and not placed in the stereo field off center.

I'm sure that capability still exists somewhere. It's a simple procedure to do it yourself if you have even basic free editing software like Audacity (which really is free).

Make a copy of the song you want to process, split the track and invert only one track (either track).

There are likely YouTube tutorials on this.

Any background vocals which are off center in the stereo field will be hard to eliminate.

Also, the fidelity is somewhat degraded by the process, because the bass drum (kick) and bass are often also in the center.

I would not be surprised if Audacity even has 'remove center vocal' as a filter option.

Fun to experiment with…just remember to work on copies of your files.

[JonPR]

Yes, Audacity does have a centre removal option.

As MikeBmusic says, like all these "karaoke" processes, it simply removes anything panned dead centre (by switching the phase of one channel). Normally that's lead vocal, also commonly bass.
And it only works with stereo tracks of course!

Transcribe has the same karaoke option, with a slider so you can still move around between L and R channels (sometimes helps). You could do the same with Audacity, but you'd need to separate the stereo track into two mono ones (easily done, just a few more key presses).

However, Transcribe has no app version, if that's important to you (only available in full version, so you need a laptop or desktop). I don't know about Audacity.
Audacity is totally free; Transcribe is free for the first month. (Both are highly recommended in any case. Audacity is basically a free multitrack recorder/editor.)

Transcribe will work with a footpedal if you want to use it as a hands-free practice tool. (Never tried that myself, I just use it for learning songs - I manage to practice along with it too, you can set loop points to save pushing buttons all the time.)