Neophyte with sound / program questions « Videomaker Community Forums

RuneTraverse
Member

I'm currently working on an AMV - animated music video - with a particular song, which I have the normal version of as a .wma file. I'd like to replace one word in the refrain with another; by splitting the syllables of a few other words in the song, I managed to make the change in Windows Movie Maker. But as you can imagine, this played havoc with the underlying instrumentals, and severely screws with the quality of the song.

My question is this: is there a program out there that will separate the vocals from the instrumentals so I can make the change? I'd prefer freeware or shareware, for obvious reasons, but at this point, I haven't found one at all. The two Adobe products I tried - Soundbooth beta and the trial version of Audition 2.0 respectively - failed miserably, and nearly crashed my computer besides. If there isn't a program out there, maybe someone knows where I can get separate tracks of various songs? The instrumentals are available on karaoke sites, I think, but I've had no luck even looking for just the vocals.

Thanks.

Posted 5 years ago #
cwillsher
Member

You may be able to fudge it by using a Band-Pass filter to narrow the frequency range of the material, such that you can at least remove the bass and top end. But there is little doubt there will still be enough instrumental parts sitting within the vocal range to screw it up.

I would suggest the best way forward would be to contact the original artist and try to obtain the multitrack masters - or get them to do the audio edit for you.

Posted 5 years ago #
RuneTraverse
Member

Damn. I figured frequency narrowing might be helpful, but I was hoping not to mess with that. *sigh* If I narrowed the range and made the change, then added a second track of just the instrumentals, do you think it might help? Contacting Alabama Heartland is a waaaay last resort for this - it's kind of a pet project more than anything.

Posted 5 years ago #
cwillsher
Member

I'm sure it would help but all music material is different, you can only try it and see. If you have a separate instrumental version of the same, original recording that will certainly be a benefit (an entirely different karaoke recording may just give you further problems). Otherwise you could try duplicating the original track and using a band reject filter (or combined Low and High Pass filters) to remove the vocal, before mixing with your 'vocal only' edit.

I fancy that is as good as you are going to get. The only other thing you could attempt is recording the new word youself and doing the best you can to match the vocal delivery and processing - could be very tough but it may just sound more natural than cutting up syllables.

It depends very much on the song but you could even re-record a whole vocal line or chorus and remix it using some extreme processing (distortion, flanger etc.) to cover up the fact that it's a different voice. You may need to get pretty creative here in order to get a usable result. X-D

Good luck!

Posted 5 years ago #
RuneTraverse
Member

Ah! I remembered the other thing I was going to ask. Is it possible at all to reverse the band reject filters, so it takes out the instrumentals instead of the vocals? I didn't think so, but someone I was chatting with on another board mentioned it as a possibility.

Posted 5 years ago #
cwillsher
Member

Well you could do a very similar thing using an EQ plugin that has adjustable high & low-pass filters.

For the vocal take: Switch in the hi/low filters and bring the frequencies down/up to cut out all the unwanted (music) frequencies. You could also try and boost the remaining vocal region slightly.

For the instrumental take: Switch off the filters and reduce the gain in the region you boosted in the vocal take.

It's useful if the EQ plugin has a visual reference, rather than those like in Final Cut Pro which just employ numbers.

Posted 5 years ago #