Make your own acapella

[formigo]

Hey... many moons ago someone put up a link to some instructions for subtracting the instrumental version of a song from the vocal version to produce instant acapella... does anyone still have this link?

I'm too lazy to play around and work it out myself. Well, actually I'm not neccessarily too lazy to do so at all, but I may as well ask.

[Brother Logic]

I think that the idea was to record the instrumental and full parts seperatly. Then you could trim them down so that they both start at exactly the same point and then subtract the instrumental from the full version. If you can't subtract then you can always invert the instrumental and add them together - but you'd probably have to get them fairly accuratly matched up. As long as the instrumental is just the full version without the vocals this should work pretty well - though it'd work better on CD versions rather than records but...

[Nick Cope]

Is this really possible? I can't imagine how... Tech gets more amazing every day, but if I ever saw some kind of vocal freq filter that could do that, i'd totally be bowled over! Hey Wooly, ever come across anything like this?

[Palmer_Eldrich]

It'll work for stuff from the same session, where the vocal and instrumental are exactly in sync throughout (from the same clock). Otherwise you'll have to do it with chops (in logic) keeping them together as much as possible over the whole mix, but this could take up a lot of time, as i found out in the above example.
There IS a way of time-stretching a mix in logic so that it perfectly lines up from start to finish (theoretically). But if you're copying them from vinyl you may still have to do a bit of adjustment to make up for any slight fluctuations over the duration of the mix. I will try this out when i can and report back.
'Out of Phase' means inverting the phase, btw, if that wasn't clear. So you get phase cancellation of the music.

Peace J.

[sermad]

if the instrumental mix is exactly the same as the vocal mix (ie they just muted the vocal) then yes you can invert the wavefom - combine them and the result will be the vocal with some noise.

Here is the url - http://www.4trak.net/dsico/archives/cat_how_to.html

[Nick Cope]

Oh okay I get it now... now isn't that clever!

Time to get all my Hip Hop 12s out...

[sermad]

I need some new accappellas. fancy digging some out for me!

[eclipsechaser]

i remember reading of another technique. There are software tools that will do this for you if you have the tune on a pc. In many instances (perhaps not the older recordings) the vocals are recorded directly in the centre of the stereo field. The rest of the instruments are recorded off centre. There are tools available that will strip out the centre field stuff only. Probably works well on those new over cleanly produced recordings but I doubt it for funk. Anyway I never did manage to get this to work. You could try asking on the cubase or someother newsgroups.

Anyway I reckon, this is interesting and anorack enough so please keep us informed if you do find a way.

[Nick Cope]

Quote[/b] (sermad @ Nov. 26 2003,12:21)]I need some new accappellas. fancy digging some out for me!

Yeah, that's just what i need - Organised Konfusion rapping over The Human League...!

[sermad]

Oooooooooh. Meow.

[Palmer_Eldrich]

It usually leaves the resonance from the stereo reverb. Like a ghost performance

[formigo]

Hey, thanks for all the responses guys, I'll let you know how I get on...

Basically I want to work a bit of mash-up action into my Xmas mix, but local hip-hop rarely comes out on twelve and seemingly never has an acapella when it does... and I've pledged to keep it all 100% Kiwi content except for the parts that are Australian. (But you guys can't tell the difference anyway).