drumnbass.be forum » Production » Production questions & answers » Canceling things out Canceling things out Author Post Philthy McNasty Florida DnB Masta! Registration Date: 23-07-2006 Posts: 1,088 Helpfulness rating:  I am trying to do a remix of a song from the eighty's that I am pretty sure doesnt have an accepella or instrumental for it. I want to take out certain elements of it, but I am not too sure how to do so. Any help on taking out the vocals, guitar, fx seperately? __ http://www.myspace.com/philthydubbish 01-12-2006 23:49 Surora23 Agressive Melodic Disorder Registration Date: 05-07-2004 Posts: 2,127 Helpfulness rating:  quote: Originally posted by iKoN aka Philthy I am trying to do a remix of a song from the eighty's that I am pretty sure doesnt have an accepella or instrumental for it. I want to take out certain elements of it, but I am not too sure how to do so. Any help on taking out the vocals, guitar, fx seperately? not possible... __ Rinse it OUT!!!! 02-12-2006 00:43 @1$-) unregistered depending on the tempo and style of the track you can sometimes just get away with taking large portions, warping it in ableton and then eq it and try piling beats over the top. Sometimes works but youll have to be creative with your edits, but it really depends on what your sampling. or you could try going through the track and picking out little bits if they are played on their own, but its a bit of a shit alternative if your after the whole tune. then again there is phase cancellation. But if you dont have an exact instrumental version then forget it. otherwise. no. cant be done. your screwed. next idea ---> 02-12-2006 00:56 Philthy McNasty Florida DnB Masta! Registration Date: 23-07-2006 Posts: 1,088 Helpfulness rating:  Shitty....I am gonna still try it, and try and improv so to speak. Bah dat sucks, I will try the FX phaser attempt at atleast lowering certain volumes and maybe I can overpower them and cancel them out somewhat that way. Thanks for the help Surora and Munki __ http://www.myspace.com/philthydubbish 02-12-2006 01:18 Rudeone love & light Registration Date: 15-10-2005 Posts: 926 Helpfulness rating:  forget it __ MySpace 02-12-2006 03:08 Muad'Dib Andrejnalin Registration Date: 02-12-2003 Posts: 4,197 Helpfulness rating:  If you try and spend a whole week on filtering and such, you might pull something off. Try phase canceling of beats that are alone and beats that are within the section where you don't want them to be. For example, if there is a snare somewhere in the tune which is without any other noise, make it cancel the snare that is somewhere with voice etc. might work, never tried but I think it can work. __ Thinking about becoming an Image-Line/FL Studio customer? Want a 10% reduction in price? Use this affiliate link: http://affiliate.image-line.com/BADEBDG473 There is no such thing without its opposite -Bene Gesserit 02-12-2006 03:47 Knives Tourist Registration Date: 29-11-2006 Posts: 12 quote: Originally posted by Muad'Dib Try phase canceling of beats that are alone and beats that are within the section where you don't want them to be. For example, if there is a snare somewhere in the tune which is without any other noise, make it cancel the snare that is somewhere with voice etc. might work, never tried but I think it can work. Phase cancelling does work. In fact, it works wonders. However, it only works, uh... how can I put this... when it works. In order to get exactly what you want out of phase cancellation, the waves you're aligning have to be exactly the same. I mean exactly the same. They have to be cut in exactly the same places (at points of zero amplitude, if you're doing it right), and they must resemble each other perfectly - except, of course, for the part you're trying to isolate. I've done it with Snoop Dogg's Drop It Like It's Hot. It was a long time ago and it was only to try my hand at the process. I wanted to separate the lyrics from the instrumentals and put them overtop a new beat. Simple enough; I found an instrumental to the track online - that was my first mistake. It turned out that the MP3 file (that's terrible in itself but I can deal with it) was of a different bitrate than the complete song. What this meant was that even though I lined the beats up perfectly, and flipped the phase on the instrumental, I was left with the results of MP3 artifacting left in the final mix - they sounded almost like the beat had been attenuated hugely, and slapped with a weird band-pass filter in the higher range. The beats below Snoop's voice were barely audible, but they were there. Now, if you can deal with that then some creative EQing and filtering could tone it down further and make it so the leftover sound just falls inaudibly below your mix level. Unfortunately, it sounds like the tracks you want to take elements from are more complex than what I experimented with. Regardless, phase cancellation is a neat little experiment. It's interesting to take a song you have on CD (or better quality - I'm envious of you vinyl users; I wish I could have stayed in that game but I have no cash), and rip it to MP3, then back to .WAV or some DAW-suitable format, then line the song up with itself and flip the phase to compare the high- and low-quality versions. Everyone knows you lose mostly high-end harmonics the lower your bit/sample rate goes (even with CD, to some extent), but with the phase-flipping experiment you can see exactly what you lose in conversion. OK, sorry about the essay post here... I have a lot of time to kill. __ VIOLENCE IN ACTION 02-12-2006 04:55 Philthy McNasty Florida DnB Masta! Registration Date: 23-07-2006 Posts: 1,088 Helpfulness rating:  No dude by all means explain away. I am just learning still, so any bit of info helps. Thanks! Im gonna try and work it, but I dunno, its gonna be hard to do it. And if anyone cares, I want to mash up English Beat - Save it for Later, I have just been rocking them alot lately (im in a retro 80s mood, bringin me back to my childhood), and there are so many elements in that track, that I think would set a track off. Anyways, thanks for the help __ http://www.myspace.com/philthydubbish 02-12-2006 05:06 djfreemc Sponsor Registration Date: 25-07-2003 Posts: 1,117 Helpfulness rating:  You can indeed try phase cancelling. Another technique worth trying is based on the fact that vocals are mostly mixed exactly in the middle of the stereo spectrum, I'm not sure if it will work on eighties tracks, because they don't all use stereo I think. First, you should change your file from stereo to double mono. Then change the phase of 1 channel. now when playing both channels at the same time, you should have more or less an instrumental. Now subtract the instrumental from the original, and you have the acapella left. __ The mysteries of the distorted snare... Can't win if u don't play 02-12-2006 11:37 thechronic admin Registration Date: 01-11-2002 Posts: 5,293 Helpfulness rating:  quote: Originally posted by Knives OK, sorry about the essay post here... I have a lot of time to kill. Why not write an article about it then? __ If you find spam on the site, please hit the button and select my name. I'll personally kick it to the murky depths of hell where it belongs! 02-12-2006 12:00 Muad'Dib Andrejnalin Registration Date: 02-12-2003 Posts: 4,197 Helpfulness rating:  quote: Originally posted by thechronic quote: Originally posted by Knives OK, sorry about the essay post here... I have a lot of time to kill. Why not write an article about it then? Yeah, I thought about telling him that too! go for it! __ Thinking about becoming an Image-Line/FL Studio customer? Want a 10% reduction in price? Use this affiliate link: http://affiliate.image-line.com/BADEBDG473 There is no such thing without its opposite -Bene Gesserit 02-12-2006 13:35 Knives Tourist Registration Date: 29-11-2006 Posts: 12 quote: Originally posted by Muad'Dib quote: Originally posted by thechronic quote: Originally posted by Knives OK, sorry about the essay post here... I have a lot of time to kill. Why not write an article about it then? Yeah, I thought about telling him that too! go for it! Hey, thanks for the heads-up! I'm new here; haven't seen this. But I'd love to help anywhere I can offer my experience (worked in studios since very young, currently on my way to get a degree in Music Industry Arts here at Fanshawe). I'll get started on that article (and maybe even include some pictures) as soon as I'm done with my course workload. Thanks again guys, cheers! __ VIOLENCE IN ACTION 03-12-2006 01:11 drumnbass.be forum » Production » Production questions & answers » Canceling things out