Removing background music

Ken Lang · Post by **Ken Lang** » 3 Jul 2008 6:34 pm

I've got a recording of my brother-in-law and I from about 1958. I'd like to remove the background from the track and leave just the vocal, so I can put a new background in it. They say Audacity, which I have, can do it. There's even a couple of posts on U tube on how to do it, but they are not very clear.

Anyway, I tried it with no success, that is, I only got a few steps into it before the next steps became unclear. The help file doesn't seem to help either.

Anyone done this? In Audacity or any thing else?

Tobie Schalkwyk · Post by **Tobie Schalkwyk** » 3 Jul 2008 8:56 pm

Ken I can't imagine that there's any software that can do this - unless it was recorded in midi / other multitracking format with the vocals & music on seperate 'channels' / tracks. You can then 'switch of' / delete some of the channels / tracks until only the vocals remain.

If you've got it in mp3 / cda (normal CD) format then all of the song is recorded in one stream and it's highly unlikely that any software can distinguish voice from music in order to split it.

What format is your recording in?

Ken Lang · Post by **Ken Lang** » 4 Jul 2008 6:45 am

The original recording was done on a Webcor tape recorder. I took that recording and ran it into Cakewalk. Then I made it into an MP3. When I put it onto a CD it was a Windows Media File. I can convert the song into most any file extension.

As I say, I tried it Audacity. I was able to divide it into a stereo track, and from there should be able to invert the music so it will be gone, leaving only the vocal. I've seen it done in the Utube video. I just can't seem to do it myself.

John Roche · Post by **John Roche** » 4 Jul 2008 9:53 am

Ken ,send me a copy and I'll see what I can do...

Bent Romnes · Post by **Bent Romnes** » 5 Jul 2008 5:17 pm

Ken, if John can't do it, nobody can...

Ken Lang · Post by **Ken Lang** » 5 Jul 2008 8:18 pm

I've sent a file to John. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

John Roche · Post by **John Roche** » 6 Jul 2008 12:10 am

Ken , can you send it again as there was no music on the attachment...John

Joey Ace · Post by **Joey Ace** » 6 Jul 2008 6:03 am

Removing or isolating vocals by the stereo inversion method is very dependent on how the stereo mix was originally created.

If you made a stereo mix from a mono original, it won't
work.

The best you can do is aggressively EQ the unwanted frequencies out. This usually yields unsatisfactory results, because some of those freqs overlap with what you want to keep.

Ken Lang · Post by **Ken Lang** » 6 Jul 2008 8:20 am

John. I will send it again, but like Joey said: It is not a stereo song, so I hold out little hope.

Ken Lang · Post by **Ken Lang** » 8 Jul 2008 6:42 pm

Just to close this out. No deal. At present it cannot be done, but I would like to thank John for giving a try.