Seperate music tracks

spoodie · Post by **spoodie** » November 22nd, 2009, 15:24

First I'd like to point out I know little about making music but I do like to dabble occasionally. This is a disclaimer in case this question is retarded.

Something that's been bothering me for a long time is where do remixers, etc. get the separated vocal and instrument tracks from? I'd guess professional musicians can get this material from the source on agreement, but what about chiptuners and other amateurs? Presumably you can aquire this material from somewhere, but I've never been able to find anything. Perhaps I'm failing as I'm missing some fundimental knowledge of what I'm looking for. Can you help?

If this would be better in the secret place let me know and I'll move it.

Post by **Roman Totale** » November 22nd, 2009, 15:43

As far as I'm aware you'd need a sampling machine. I think they're fairly expensive, but there must be cheaper PC based versions.

Also found this site that has links to lots of samples:

http://www.synthzone.com/sampling.htm

They've even got one for animal noises!

buzzmong · Post by **buzzmong** » November 22nd, 2009, 15:54

I think the amatuers get it from the same place, or at least similar sources. It's difficult to find specific versions as normally they're produced from the multitrack masters.

You can pick up individual tracks by frequency seperation but it's not exactly nice sounding at times, f'instance you'd pick up bass drum if you were hunting just for the bass guitar part due to the frequency overlap.

There's also the fact that some people also just build their own versions, more so with instrumental tracks than anything else though as they can lay down their own versions of the tracks in a copycat fashion.

I suspect most are built from sample libraries like Roman linked to.

spoodie · Post by **spoodie** » November 22nd, 2009, 22:22

buzzmong wrote:You can pick up individual tracks by frequency seperation but it's not exactly nice sounding at times, f'instance you'd pick up bass drum if you were hunting just for the bass guitar part due to the frequency overlap.

I played around with kind of thing back in the day when I had a hardware sampler on my Amiga. So I have an idea of the limitations of the technique. I imagine the tech is much better now, but I also imagine that the limitation are still there, like you describe.

The reason I ask is because I've been wanting to try a chiptune-style track using a basic tracker and a familiar vocal track. Like this - http://8bitcollective.com/music/electro ... lla+REMIX/
Sorry its Umbrella, but its better than the original and its the only one I could think of.

buzzmong · Post by **buzzmong** » November 22nd, 2009, 23:45

Hmm, Umbrella is a very vocal driven track in its original mix though, so I wouldn't be suprised if it was just very good cutting and a bit of frequency cut off being applied to the cut samples.

There are ways around it after all, but I wouldn't be too suprised if a vocal only track was available somewhere.

TheJockGit · Post by **TheJockGit** » November 23rd, 2009, 0:11

Have a word with Sololololol... he might be able to point you in the right direction

Post by **FatherJack** » November 23rd, 2009, 13:12

There are tools to seperate the vocals, but they mostly work off the fact that vocals are in a set frequency range and are sat in the "middle" of the stereo feed - ie: the same signal through each speaker, so you invert the phase of one channel. Results are mixed, depending on the track.

There's some info on it here: http://www.paintingbynumbers.com/bootcamp/

For the track you mentioned, they probably used this or similar: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtJlHNlmk3E - not perfect, but disguised by the speed and effects he uses.

spoodie · Post by **spoodie** » November 23rd, 2009, 14:31

That's useful but also looks like a lot of hard work.

Post by **Grimmie** » November 23rd, 2009, 14:41

Could always check out InstrumentalsAndMore on Youtube, or message him.
He scours fan forums for the official track releases.

http://www.youtube.com/user/instrumentalsandmore

Post by **Grimmie** » November 23rd, 2009, 15:26

Especially for cool stuff like this;

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyrECsXmVbI[/media]

Post by **FatherJack** » November 23rd, 2009, 18:05

spoodie wrote:That's useful but also looks like a lot of hard work.

That just explains the theory, there are tools that do it, but if you want easy, just either search for someone that's done it already (like that youtube rihanna thing) or an 'acapella' version. I've gone down the technical route myself before and the results aren't usually worth the effort, unless you further distort the vocals enough that the phasing isn't noticeable.

spoodie · Post by **spoodie** » November 23rd, 2009, 18:07

Grimmie wrote:Especially for cool stuff like this;

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyrECsXmVbI[/media]

That's pretty awesome, I'll look at his other stuff.