Removing vocal track from soundtrack

I'm a soccer mom who takes photos of my daughter's soccer games, pulls them into iMovie and puts them together with music. If I'm just doing this for personal use, is there a way in iMovie or GarageBand to remove the vocal track from a song? Is there some other software that can do this?

Nope; vocals are "baked in" as part of the mix: there's no way to "extract" a vocal from a recording..
..except that if the vocal's mono right at the imaginary 'centre' of the stereo, and the music's in stereo, you can - with patience, the right software, or by just wiring one of your speakers back to front and re-recording what comes out of them both - "reverse phase" one of the stereo channels.
That will subtract the vocal from the overall mix, and leave you with just the backing music - possibly sounding a little "thin" or a bit distant - and no singing! (..Kenny Everett, the Liverpudlian DJ used to do that regularly on the radio with Beatles songs to turn them into singalong karaoke tracks..)
So experiment: reverse the phase of either the left or right track of a stereo pair: you can select a left or right channel in the (..now..) rather expensive 'Sound Studio' and 'Invert' it..
..but although the (..free..) 'Audacity' (click that blue link) offers the 'Invert' option, I can't quite see how to select just one channel and invert just that..
..Maybe someone else knows how!
But this only works if the vocals are dead centre in the "sound stage" (..i.e; when you wear headphones or stand between the speakers the voice comes out dead in the centre). It won't work properly if the voice is also in stereo and spreads across between left and right.
(N.B: The dining room of the Hotel Valadier in Rome has one of its speakers wired the wrong way round, so Bob Dylan's lyrics and voice are completely missing when they play, erm, is it, er, either John Wesley Harding or Lay Lady Lay..?)

Similar Messages

Vocal Track from Analog Tape

Hello
Over the last year I have been successfully transferring analog cassette tape to digital for my non profit organization. What I do is connect a Sherwood cassette play/ record deck to a Sony digital recorder. I record the tape on the Sony device. Then after coping the audio to the computer's audio folder I begin to clean up the artifacts using Adobe Audition CS6.
Most of the tapes are decades old. Sometimes I need to remove the tape from a compromised cassette case to a new case to reclaim the vocals.
This tape I present is a 1971 recording. This is the only tape of a popular guest speaker - and I do not know what to do. If I can salvage her lecture it would be a great Christmas gift to my organization.
The audio presented is from the Sony digital recorder. Please inspect this audio track. I would be grateful to know what I can do to salvage this audio.
I am wondering if I should remove the tape from its old case. Put the tape into a new case - and then connect the Sherwood deck to the computer - interface directly with Audition and make a recording. I don't know. I have gotten to used to using deck to digital recorder with great results.
Let me know if I can salvage this tape - what steps I can apply to fix the audio - the steps I would need to do to reclaim Envy's vocals.
Thanks!

Since you have a cassette player which functions well enough, have you checked whether the distortion in your sample is actually present on the original cassette tape, perhaps by plugging a pair of headphones into the player or by connecting the player to an amplifier and listening to it?
If the distortion is not on the original cassette you should do as you suggest, and connect the output of the cassette player direct to your computer interface, bypassing the Sony recorder. Personally, to me that is a far better option anyway; why digitise your recordings in the Sony and then copy the file to your computer, when you could have the file on your computer in one pass?
If the distortion is present on the original cassette I fear there is very little you can do about it; reducing the overall level of the file (in Audition) may help slightly, but if the distortion has occurred because the original analogue recording level was set wrongly I see almost no chance of any even half-way decent "improvement".

Is there an easy way to remove audio track from .mp4

Guys
Wondered if anybody knows of a way to take a .mp4 file with a silent audio track exported and remove that audio track altogether without having to reconvert the video in AME- just deleting the (silent) audio track
Have lots of files that need this and was looking for a way to do this without going back and reexporting all the clips the hard way
Any thoughts much appreciated-- (I have access to both Windows 7 and WIndows XP pro 64 bit)
Thanks
Tony

Thanks Jim
I figured that would work but for some reason the resulting files did not play correctly--Alternatively I used Mpegstreamclip -opened the video I wanted to erase audio track from--- clicked on "edit--delete audio track" then clicked "save as" and this finally accomplished what I was trying to do--Now have a copy of the .mp4 file wo audio
Thanks for all your help--Hope this thread helps someone in the future
Peace
Tony

Probably Stupid question, but - how to remove motion tracking from a clip?

I've been playing around with the motion tracking feature, and think I may have come up with a way to make it work to highlight my now infamous "football"
However, I need to delete the motion tracking effect (s) that I've added to the clip so that I can start fresh. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to delete it!
This may be a very elemental question - and I apologize, but I cannot find the answer. I just cannot delete the original yellow tracking boxes -
Thanks in advance for your help!
Kim

To remove the Motion Tracking, just delete the graphic you attached to it. There's no need to remove the Tracking Object itself.
Although you can if you'd like. Just click to select the clip and then click on the Motion Tracking tool. Then right-click on the blue or yellow squares and select Delete.

Removing audio tracks from a clip

Hi,
I have a set of HD clips that were digitized with 8 tracks of audio. I only need the first two. Is there a way to eliminate these extra tracks BEFORE dropping them on the timeline. It's a great annoyance to have to either lock off audio layers to prevent these from going on my timeline, or having to link and unlink layers and remove them.. There has got to be a better way!!
Any ideas??
Thanks!

Locate your clip in the Finder, on the Media drive. Duplicate your clip first...to make sure you don't mess anything up irreversibly.
Open it in Quicktime. Go to the WINDOW menu and then SHOW MOVIE PROPERTIES. Notice how you have a Video track, and then 8 audio tracks, and the timecode track. Delete the audio tracks you don't want by highlighting them and pressing DELETE.
Save the file. Import that into FCP to make sure it is done right.
Shane

Removing audio tracks from videos

I have some videos with 2 audio tracks on them (stereo and surround).
Is there any way to remove one of those tracks without converting the video?

It can be done with QuickTime Pro
<http://store.apple.com/us/product/D3380Z/A>
"Show Movie Properties" in "Window" menu, detete the unwanted track, then "Save" in "File" menu.
You may need to install Perian
<http://www.perian.org>

I want to remove duplicate tracks from my library

I have many duplictaes.Is there a one button sorting tool to delete the duplicates?? My email is [email protected] Many thanks in advance

Thank you for your reply.I have done that.Ssing the duplicates,I want a command that says "Delete Duplicates" or an alternative. Otherwise,I must scroll down the list and delete each one "by hand"..I may not live that long!! John Wilson

IPod Full - How do I remove tracks from iPod to create space?

The tracks in my iTunes has superseeded the size of my 20GB iPod.
I need to leave some space on my iPod to back up important work files, therefore how do I remove selected tracks from my iPod to create the necessary space?
Thx for your help.
Matt.

Any changes needed for your iPod will have to be made in iTunes. How about making a specific playlist in iTunes for your iPod of a specfic size which will allow for your work files, then in your iPod preferences tell iTunes to only sync iPod to that playlist? Welcome to discussions!

Can't delete tracks from iCloud

I'm trying to delete tracks from my iCloud instance.
In iTunes, I delete from my library all of the tracks that I want removed from iCloud. A pop-up dialogue asks if I would like to remove these tracks from iCloud as well. I select the checkbox to indicate yes I do want. The tracks are then visibly removed from my local iTunes library. The next time iTunes Match runs, however, these tracks are re-populated in my iTunes library, as being matched in iCloud.
Obviously I am missing some nuanced step in this process. Any hints?
If it helps, I'd be perfectly happy to have my entire iCloud library deleted, and start fresh.
Note: I am not deleting the files themselve from the filesystem, just trying to remove their entry in my iTunes library.

Solved.
My problem is a duplicate of https://discussions.apple.com/message/16988521#16988521
Solution: delete tracks in groups <900, and be patient.

How do I remove purchased music from my iPhone?

I have purchased music using my iphone. Now I'm trying to remove the tracks from the phone. They are not on any of my playlists that I have set to sync, but they are always still synced to my phone. I have even gone as far as unchecking the Sync Music option in iTunes. This removed all my playlisat tracks, but the purchased tracks are still on my iPhone.
How do I get them off? I thought there used to be an option on the Sync Music page of iTunes whenever I bought a track, but now I don't see it.

Synch your phone with iTunes and transfer your purchases to your computer.
Then once you're sure those songs are safely on your computer, unsynch them from your iPhone by unchecking them in iTunes.

Deleting Tracks from Itunes and from Hard drive

Hiya
I used to click delete in Itunes and it would remove the track from both Itunes and my hard drive.
However no it only deletes from Itunes, any way to get it back to how it was?
Cheers

I was having this problem and managed to find a solution.
I had to change my iTunes folder to the same folder that my music was actually located in.
In iTunes:
Edit -> Preferences... -> Advanced -> (iTunes Music Folder Location) Change..
Hope this helps some people.

Missing Vocal Tracks

Lately I've been experiencing this weird thing where random vocal tracks from my Garageband files are going missing. I'll open a song I did about a year or so ago or even a couple of months ago and as it's loading files it will inform me that tracks are missing. If I look in the Package Contents, they are, indeed, gone. This seems to be isolated to only my Garageband files -- my Logic Studio files don't seem to have this problem.

I also encountered this issue with part of a movie commentary track I am recording.

Can't remove some tracks marked with exclamation

Hello everyone,
I recently purchased a new iMac, and while I had previsouly moved my entire iTunes library to the cloud (iTunes Match), thus not having all those gigabites filling the old Macbook's drive, now I am moving the whole thing back to the iMac, as it has lots of space.
Almost all the tracks downloaded without any problems, but there are a handful that are being a pain. These tracks are not from a single album, but random tracks along the whole library, and they have an exclamation mark to their left, and I can't either download them nor remove them from the track list. Although none of those with problems have been purchased from the iTunes Store, I have them on CD, and I wouldn't mind importing them to iTunes again. After all, we're talking about 10 or so tracks. Not that bad. The problem is I can't remove these problematic tracks from iTunes. If I try to download them, I get an error message. If I go and delete them, nothing happens, and they are still there (but not as a file in Finder, only in iTunes!).. And the weirdest part is, I can play/stream them from iTunes Match!
Is this weird, or has anyone experienced it before? And what could I do to solve this?
Thank you so much for you help.

Hi Michael, and thank you for your help.
Now, that's when it gets tricky. The files aren't indeed in my drive, because I did use Match to stream my music from while I was using the MBP. Once I got Match I deleted the local files to save space, since I could always get all of them back whenever I want to.
And in fact I did. We're talking about 10 or so tracks in a library of thousands.
What makes this strange is the fact that I can't download these tracks (althoug I can play/stream them). Neither method (clicking the cloud icon or right clicking and selectind download) works. I keep getting an errorwhen trying to download. And I can't remove those tracks from iTunes either. Really strange. I would happily import the tracks from the original cds, which I did to try, but then I end up with two versions of the track, one normal and one with the exclamation mark!
What do you make from that?
Again, many thanks ;)

Removing duplicate tracks whose files have been moved...

As a result of manually repairing my music files and folders, many of the track listings in itunes are now dead links. Is there an efficient way to identify, select and delete these?
Ken

So true. I am in transition from Windows XP and Media Monkey. Many of the tracks are either not tagged at all or are erroniously tagged, having been sourced over the years from all kinds of libraries...traded, downloaded, ripped when off line so there is little meta data...
In all a mess.
Itunes is great for manipulating well tagged files but I am very tempted just go back to media Monkey to re-tag everything and start a new Itunes library.
I have, however downloaded "Super Remove Dead Tracks" from Doug's Scripts. In 15 seconds, It processed the entire library and cleaned up all the dead links.
Perhaps, with a few more well chosen scripts...
Ken

Playback of tracks from library

hi can anyone help when i play songs from my library they stutter and jump you press play the first track starts and its like an old vinyl record and when it finishes and goes on to the next track it stutters and jumps when i try to pause it it takes its time to stop has anyone else had this problem is there a simple fix to it thank's for listening to me ramble but its driving me crazy it even doesit when i burn a cd you can hear it on playback AHHHRRRR!!!!

You can select a range of tracks by clicking the first, and then holding shift while you click the last. You can also add or remove individual tracks from the selection using ctrl+click. When you have your selection drag it to the playlist.
tt2

Removing vocal track from soundtrack

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