Audio Editing

[jamescwarren]

Hi everyone. I am looking for a "free" audio editing program that lets me do things like changing pitches and possibly removing the words to music. I have Audacity but found the layout a bit confusing. Any ideas...?

Thanks

 

[yellow]

Hi everyone. I am looking for a "free" audio editing program that lets me do things like changing pitches and possibly removing the words to music. I have Audacity but found the layout a bit confusing. Any ideas...?

As in removing the lyrics and leaving only the music?

I don't think there's such a beast to do what you want unless you have the original recording/tracks, in which case you wouldn't be asking about an app to do that.

Are you thinking, take and MP3, open it in application X, strip out the lyrics for karaoke kinda thing?

 

[jamescwarren]

basically yes

 

[yellow]

basically yes

OK.. not possible. An MP3 doesn't carry sound information on different tracks so you could isolate and remove one if you wanted.

For sound apps, you can look on http://www.versiontracker.com/macosx/

 

[croshtique]

Audion has a Karaoke effect feature that you can enable during playback. It's a bit hit and miss and I don't think there's any way to alter the standard effect but it's worth trying.

 

[iEdd]

Not possible. You see it as music+lyrics, but it sees it as a series of long and shot waves. You are asking it to chop out half a wave every now and then. The only way I could see it is if you had an exact copy of the lyrics being sung, and the full version, and the program would then know what you want to take away from the full version. I have no idea what program could do that though.
EDIT: Unless it could numb or blur out some sound.. Now you've got me thinking..

 

[yellow]

Audion has a Karaoke effect feature that you can enable during playback.

Interesting.. it took me a while to find it, and it was pretty miss (on the hit or miss scale), but interesting none-the-less.

 

[iEdd]

Audion has a Karaoke effect feature that you can enable during playback. It's a bit hit and miss and I don't think there's any way to alter the standard effect but it's worth trying.

Thanks, I tried that, which works by separating the left and right channel and muting the one it thinks has singing. It might work for some of the old Who music and some beatles, but it didn't work for me

 

[OldCorpse]

pro tools

Not possible. You see it as music+lyrics, but it sees it as a series of long and shot waves. You are asking it to chop out half a wave every now and then. The only way I could see it is if you had an exact copy of the lyrics being sung, and the full version, and the program would then know what you want to take away from the full version. I have no idea what program could do that though.
EDIT: Unless it could numb or blur out some sound.. Now you've got me thinking..

Try digidesign protools. Way back when... ancient history... I sat in a postproduction studio where a bunch of audio engineers were working on a music track for a movie. I saw them actually be able to edit a sound file in such a way, that they could take out a given musical instrument out of the mix of other instruments and also the vocals. Basically, you try to take out all the frequencies where the vocals occur - you don't get silence, because the audio signature of the instruments is different from a vocal. Of course, some of the frequencies are so close, that both vocal and instrument can't be separated, but at that point it doesn't matter, because you won't recognize it as a vocal snippet (it gets to be extremely short and exactly like an instrument... so you can't tell the difference). I know it was time consuming to do, but doable. Oh, and btw., they were using Macs

Edit: I just googled and found an example of a link that talks about editing out vocals... so it CERTAINLY IS POSSIBLE!!!!

http://www.blazeaudio.com/products/vocalreducer.html

 

[crazytom]

Yes, it is possible...just not probable.

I've had to do this a number of times for people. There was a cool little gizmo that you could run it through, called the Vocal Zapper. It didn't do a great job all the time, it was totally dependant on the vocals. Anything in the audio mix that was dead center would disappear (mostly vocals). If there were any STEREO effects on the vocals, those would remain...most of the time, you'd hear the reverb and most pop albums have A LOT of reverb on the vox. It will not work on a mono recording...your resulting sound is ... nothing!

The whole concept is based on phasing the center mix out (take the right channel, mix it with a reverse phase left channel and BAM: no 'center' channel). I've done it with some success with Bias Peak, but that doesn't help you much, cause it cost a pretty penny. The Vocal Zapper provides as good of results as anyone can get for a fraction of the price, but you have to find someone that can solder a few resistors on a circuit board (not very difficult to do). It's definitely worth its weight in gold.