How Can I do This? (Main song -> Instrumental)

[Castiel]

For my last project in my Drama class before the semester ends I would like to do a little singing. I'm looking for an instrumental version of a song called, "Let it Burn" by the band Red. I have only found one but it sucked really bad and you could still hear the vocals.

I have a copy of the song with the vocals in it still. Would it be possible to use a simple editing program like Audacity to edit out the vocals? Would I have to get a program that would cost quite a bit of money? Is it even possible?

 

[Rydian]

Instrumental versions are songs that never had the vocals added to begin with, if that tells you anything about all the technical difficulties about removing them... it'd be like trying to mix blue and yellow paint to make green, then taking the green and getting the yellow out of it. The version you have is the green, it's the version that has the vocals mixed in.

You can try, but as you saw a lot of attempts suck.
http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Vocal_Removal

 

[Lanlan]

Maybe try to find an instrumental cover version of it. Do you know any musicians? Maybe someone skilled with midi-type stuff? Try googling around

 

[Sychophantom]

Actually, there are a few ways, but it's been years since I've done that sort of work, and most of the mashup/bastardpop/remix boards I know have died.

If you could get an acapella version, you may be able to invert the vocals to produce a somewhat clean instrumental in Ableton or Acid (I am not sure about Acid).

I do not think Audacity would work for what you want.

 

[Castiel]

Okay. I read around a bit more after making this thread and there doesn't seem to be much hope... which sucks...

Maybe try to find an instrumental cover version of it. Do you know any musicians? Maybe someone skilled with midi-type stuff? Try googling around

The thing is that I'm trying to make the biggest impact that I can. The impact will be a lot bigger if I am able to have all of the instruments playing, not just one of two. :/

If you could get an acapella version, you may be able to invert the vocals to produce a somewhat clean instrumental in Ableton or Acid (I am not sure about Acid).

Interesting. I've never heard of that before.

 

[Rydian]

It's the same sort of technique that noise-canceling headphones use, they have a mic pointed to the outside to pick up on background noise, then invert the wave (or whatever) to cancel it out.

 

[Castiel]

Well after fiddling around for a few hours, I got a couple of audio files that just sound like crap
Thank you all for your input.

 

[Arm73]

Your best bet is to search every karaoke site, youtube for karaoke songs with lyrics, torrents with karaoke songs compilations , sites with MIDI files ( less authentic, but can have a good sound never the less ) and even commercial websites selling karaoke or instrumental bases for professional DJs ( you will have to pay around $2.99 or so ).

If the song had moderately success, there is bound to be an instrumental / karaoke version of good quality somewhere to be found.
I sing music from the 50's and still find most shit that I need this way.
Give it a try.

 

[Castiel]

Guys! I found a loop-hole in a program that's working in my favour!

So, I downloaded a free trial of the program VocalRemover. Since it's a free trial it only cuts out the vocals in the first 30 seconds (it works very well compared to other programs too). However I seem to be able to do this as much as I want. Since I have no life and am very determined to get this done, I used Audacity to cut the 5 minute song into 30 second intervals, exported them as .wav. Now I am going to convert them to .mp3, use VocalRemover to edit them, put them back together using Audacity, export the whole thing as .wav, and then convert that to .mp3.

Man, this is so convoluted but it works so well

EDIT: Damn... All of the converting back and forth is ruining the quality