After twenty something years of listening to Led Zeppelin, I find I can no longer bear to hear Robert Plant’s screeching cat-in-heat whiney thing that he does. Is there an easy way to remove the vocal tracks from the Zep catalog so that I can still enjoy the music? I really can’t think of a song that is improved his contribution at this point.
No.
You could call Jimmy Page and ask him to re-mix it all. (Lose the hippy please Jimmy)
More realistically:
Edit the tracks and loop some of the Plant-less bits.
If you have the technology you can try reversing the phase of one side of a stereo mix and combining the two sides into mono. This will cancel out anything panned to the middle so you’ll lose a lot of Bonzo and JPJ as well as Percy. And the way Page mixes (loads of ambience) even this may not work very well. If there are mixes with more channels you may be able to refine this approach.
My problem with Plant is his lyrics, rather than his voice. If only he’d been singing lyrics by Morrissey or Louden Wainwright III, Mark E. Smith. . . anyone. Robert. You are not Joni frackking Michell. Leave off the flower power stuff already.
I know. They just didn’t hold up. They have their moments, but the rock god moniker no longer applies.
runs crying from the thread
Mommy, make them stop!
Actually, I’ve heard this sentiment expressed by others before. It does make you kinda curious about how well an instrumental only remix would fare. Probably pretty well as even those like myself who like Plant would find it interesting to experience them in a new fashion and with redirected focus.
Yo-Yo Ma (the cellist) came out with a CD a few years back that had instrumental versions of more than a few Led Zep songs (albeit in classical music format).
I still have the CD and never listen to it. Ya want it?
Wouldn’t there be a kareoke CD like this?
I’d love it. I had his Brandenburg concertos some years ago. It was beautiful.
Karaoke CD’s do not generally have the original artists performing. Led Zeppelin was an extraordinary band. I’d rather not hear some hacks or a computer just playing the notes.
I knew hydrogen wasn’t fueling the fire!
Oh… never mind.
Well, there’s always Moby Dick.
Not for me. I still think they are one of the greatest rock bands of all time (and I’m 33, so I didn’t grow up in their heyday). I agree Plant’s vocals can be a bit over-the-top, but I can’t imagine that band working with anyone else singing over the one-of-a-kind rhythm section of Bonham and Jones. (And Page, too, but for me, the soul of Zeppelin was the backbone.)
It’s really not a question of replacing plant, I just feel he is superfluous.
Audacity can do this. It’s an open-source (as in free) full-featured music editor. As Small Clanger pointed out, however, other parts besides the vocals may cancel each other out, depending on the mix, and the final result will be in mono, not stereo. It doesn’t completely remove the vocals all the time, either. You may still hear a faint, but noticeable echo of Plant’s vocals.
I have to admit, Led Zeppelin without Plant (and any other vocals) might just still work for me.
Can’t you just listen to the songs from the original artists, you know, the ones that Zeppelin stole the songs from, and listen to those?
What?, I kid, I kid. a little
As long as young men keep turning 14, Zepplin will always be Gods.
I always thought it wasn’t Plant they needed to lose, it was Bonham. What a clunk!
Speaks volumes for their awesomeness that they could transcend his phenomenal averageness.
I actually ran across a plugin you can get for the sound editor Amadeus that’ll automatically remove vocals from the instrumental portions of a track—I’ve only used it a couple of times, and there was some distortion (which can be adjusted, IIRC), but I actually got pretty good results.
Wow.
wait… it takes vocals out of instrumental sections? :dubious: