How to Isolate Vocals?

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How to Isolate Vocals?

Postby TheAljavis » 21 Sep 2014 16:41

So I'm working on "metalizing" the Rainbow Rocks soundtrack that got released a while ago. I'm trying to make all the songs sound like they actually "rock", at least in my standards. I work on the instrumental and they usually go great. That is until I have to put the vocals from the actual song to my version of the song. Whenever I try to isolate the vocals, it usually makes the vocals not sounding so clear, and it results in making it sound very bad in the mix. I've been looking everywhere trying to find ways to separate or isolate vocals from an official song, but most of the time I just get bad results when I try doing them. I've seen 2 people who have isolated vocals from My Little Pony songs pretty well (RainShadow & InfinityDash). So is there anyone out there who knows how to properly separate the vocals? It will help out tremendously.

And here's one Rainbow Rocks METALIZED song I finished, so you'll know how bad I am at isolating vocals.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0jhfv0jgzA
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Re: How to Isolate Vocals?

Postby itroitnyah » 22 Sep 2014 07:02

Sometimes artists will post the vocal stems for separate downloads, or maybe an instrumental version of the song for download and you can use those. Otherwise I'd be surprised if you asked an artist for vocal stems and they said no. Most brony music makers tend to be fairly nice people. edit I just realized you were talking about the Rainbow Rocks movie. I feel like an idiot now.

My idea is that a lot of songs have repeating patterns throughout them. Listen to what's beneath the vocals in terms of instruments, find another point in the song where the same pattern is playing, or a few of the instruments in the pattern are playing, copy that section and layer it over the section where you want to isolate the vocals, but invert the section you just brought in, which will cancel out a lot of the instruments, since waveforms and stuff. That should leave just the vocals. It may help to do this in your DAW, since you can usually set the bpm to the same bpm they composed in, and separating out patterns becomes 100 times easier.
Last edited by itroitnyah on 25 Sep 2014 13:51, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: How to Isolate Vocals?

Postby Freewave » 25 Sep 2014 13:49

To get a clear vocal sample for a song you're going to need an acapella. To do that you need to have a multichannel source where you have the surround sound and have vocals seperate from the background music and can isolate it from that. If you're trying to rip those from youtube when those don't contain a mutlichannel source then it simply won't work. The dvd isn't out yet so that's a huge obstacle in your plans.

Don't try to flter out vocals from a wav or a youtube rip They will sound terrible. Look towards youtube for someone to maybe get a digitally copied version the way i recommended (maybe from someone working in a movie theater) but likely only during the dvd release.
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Re: How to Isolate Vocals?

Postby NightmareRare » 29 Oct 2014 23:33

Well this is how I do it from YouTube rips, it's a bit of tinkering but I find it pulls vocals out pretty good.

P.s your gonna need a descent EQ and a multiband compressor, ableton comes with but can't speak for other DAWs.
Also best to remember with EQ everything is really on a case by case basis. No one one pill for all.

1. Get yo song! Drop the wav. Or mp3. Into a audio track

2. Next drop you EQ on to the track

3. Most Graphic Multiband EQs usually come with multiple modes. Find where to change yours (or google it), and set it to M/S mode

4. M/S stands for middle and side. What this does basically is split the audio and set up two channels within the EQ.

5. Now a button with a M should pop up under edits on the EQ. ( I'm using EQ eight so the format may be different for you) this means we're on middle right now and all Eqing will be applied only to sounds coming from the centre of the panorama. Click it and set it to S or side

6. Vocals typically are panned dead centre. Usually anyways. But to keep it short, now in Side mode High pass everything out. This should remove any stereo spreading, panned Hihats, reverb, effects, and make instruments weaker in general while keeping the centre panned vocals intact.

7. Now to kill the drums. Go back to middle mode and high pass it, you'll have to play this by ear but you should be safe cutting away anything below 550 - 400Hz, go as high as you can till you hear it effect the vocal then pull off a bit so it doesn't hurt them. There a delicate widdle flower.

8. as vocals live in middle range and kick & bass have fundamental frequencies of 45Hz and 80Hz ( don't quote me there lol) this should take care of that. The only this left to do for EQing depends on the composition and mix of the drums

9. Let's say there's a loud snare fighting with the vocals in the mid range. What you want to do it take an EQ band and set it with a high Q of about 3 or 4. Now boost it to the highest Db it can go and while playing the audio file slowly sweep through the upper frequencies till you find where the snares loudest and cut it out by about -12Db

Note: be carful when using 9. It can make the vocals sound frumpy if your Q is to low

Just repeat 9 for hi hats and other high register percussion. This should clean it up pretty good especially with Ingrams work. But to clean out piano, guitar, ect. nice and good your gonna need to reach for a multiband compressor of sorts. But that's for another post.

I be sleepy, such type, good luck with this read! /)
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