I had a happy accident the other day while playing with audacity and a song, I was trying to extend the track by simple copy of a section and paste back into the song, what I didnt realize at the time was I had loaded 2 copies of the original song into audacity and when I did my original copy paste I was a bit off and the result was friggin awesome…except for the vocal track that is…so can I send the file to anyone and get that done or does anyone know a free program that can handle that kind of task?
You can do that with Audacity, but it may not remove all the vocals perfectly and the end result will be in mono.
From here: Audacity download | SourceForge.net
- Import your stereo file into Audacity.
- Open the track menu (click the arrow next to the track title), and choose “Split Stereo Track.”
- Select the lower track (the right channel) by clicking it in the area around the mute/solo buttons.
- Choose “Invert” from the Effects menu.
- Using the track menus, change each track to “Mono.”
I have tried this and the best I can do is get a track that is predominantly instrumental with faint echoes of a vocal. You can attempt this to see if it works for you. If not, Audacity has other tips for vocals removal.
http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php?title=Vocal_Removal
According to Audacity, however, "There is no universal, reliable way of doing this without having the original multi-track recordings. Different tracks will require different techniques to achieve maximum possible attenuation or isolation. This will depend on where the vocals are positioned in the stereo field, and on their frequency content compared to the rest of the audio. "
nice link, but I think I worked it out without any big tricks, the song has vocals in between the guitar and beat, and since I am just trying to create a shift/repeat in the guitar beat I just duplicated the track and silenced the vocal bits…working out the details right now but I think its good to go
btw the time shift tool rules the universe, with or without stairs