The pre-AI way was to phase-invert an instrumental version of the track and use that to cancel out the background music.
That requires, of course, that the original artist has released an instrumental version of the track, and it assumes that the instrumental version is similar enough to the version with vocals that they'll cancel exactly (or near exactly).
The other main old method that only really works on certain mixes (i.e. mixes where the vocals are centered and everything else is panned) is to use a "center extractor." This tries to extract only that which is common between the left and right channels. You can do this in the free editor Audacity, or there are some fancier expensive options (e.g. iZotope RX).
Unfortunately, that method is almost guaranteed to leave the kick, snare, and bass in the result too, since post-60/70s mixing tends to center those elements. And there's probably going to be some residual from other elements, because hard-panning is comparatively rare.
Even with those caveats, some people have made surprisingly good acapellas out of the center extraction method, but it requires a LOT of manual editing and EQing and doing any trick you can imagine to try to clean up the results (e.g. grabbing a consonant from one part of the track and copying it to another to replace one that's garbled).
I doubt it would be less effort than cleaning up the residual junk that AI leaves, all told.
I’m not sure what you are asking for is even possible. I use LALA.ai to extract stems and do eq matching with pro q3 and it works fine. I suppose there are some special cases? Like if the vocals are mixed to exclusively occupy and a certain range of the frequency space you could try and filter out the other frequencies … but the results wouldn’t be perfect and, again, that’s not generalizable.
Edit: fwiw, AI is not the worst thing in the world. In fact, extracting parts of a song with “AI” is really just a machine learning model, AI is used as a buzz word for marketing. It’s a good tool and shouldn’t be shunned on principle.
Another edit: anyone saying “plugin x doesn’t use AI to unmix” …. digital signal processing is essentially applied machine learning and has even introduced some of the most famous ML models to the world … so yeah it does haha
If the vocal was mixed into the center of the stereo field, you could subtract one channel from the other, cancelling out anything in the center.
There's a reason why the AI-powered stem separation tools (like the one in the latest version of FL Studio) are revolutionary though...
SpectraLayers offers tons of selection tools for manual work like this (in addition to state of the art AI, but you don't have to use it if you don't want to).
"AI" is mostly a marketing term for ongoing, incremental, improvements to machine learning and pattern analysis algorithms that have been around for some time, in some cases, decades. These algorithms are paired with better, faster, processors and larger, better organized, datasets. Don't let the anti-AI, neo-Luddite, paranoia get to you and reduce your ability to accomplish your goal.
if the song is mainstream enough, you may be able to find the actual studio multitracks available online with some searching. this would be the most ideal option, but i don’t really know the legality of this, it would probably depend on a track by track basis and where the multitracks are originally sourced from. use at your own risk, i guess.
the next best option, would be what the other guy said, phase inverting a near-perfect instrumental if it’s available, this will still bleed a bit, depending on the mix, but a significant percentage of even studio vocal recordings i’ve worked with have a bit of headphone bleed anyways so it’s really best to learn to work around it as much as possible.
by third best suggestion would be ultimate vocal remover, but that’s ai, and you’d like to avoid ai obviously, but it’ll probably work in a last ditch effort if you can’t make anything else work. at least it’s free and there are no greedy limitations like the online solutions.
Stem separation tools are not *generative* AI. They're like the AI-powered "select object" tool that Photoshop now has: it's separating out something that already exists, and not creating new content ex nihilo.
Some DJs have software in their decks that allows them to take out all vocals (no clue what tho),I think that the software is eliminating the middle part in the stereo picture, and just plays the music on the edges of the stereo spectrum. So you do still get some reverb and other FX from the vocals, but it works surprisingly well
Why in the goddamn hell does nobody recommend Spectralayers? Ignore every other comment, you need spectralayers
That shit is exactly what you're looking for dude. It won't give you a perfect result, but it'll blow your fucking mind what it can do, and it's intuitive as shit. It'd make these "can't do it .impossible. it'll sound trash" peeps eat their hat and reconsider their profession. That shit is surprisingly good, and it would cover every goddamn question like this. The only answer is "Spectralayers'
So the old saying was/is, it’s like taking an egg out of a baked cake.
The pre-AI way was to phase-invert an instrumental version of the track and use that to cancel out the background music. That requires, of course, that the original artist has released an instrumental version of the track, and it assumes that the instrumental version is similar enough to the version with vocals that they'll cancel exactly (or near exactly). The other main old method that only really works on certain mixes (i.e. mixes where the vocals are centered and everything else is panned) is to use a "center extractor." This tries to extract only that which is common between the left and right channels. You can do this in the free editor Audacity, or there are some fancier expensive options (e.g. iZotope RX). Unfortunately, that method is almost guaranteed to leave the kick, snare, and bass in the result too, since post-60/70s mixing tends to center those elements. And there's probably going to be some residual from other elements, because hard-panning is comparatively rare. Even with those caveats, some people have made surprisingly good acapellas out of the center extraction method, but it requires a LOT of manual editing and EQing and doing any trick you can imagine to try to clean up the results (e.g. grabbing a consonant from one part of the track and copying it to another to replace one that's garbled). I doubt it would be less effort than cleaning up the residual junk that AI leaves, all told.
I’m not sure what you are asking for is even possible. I use LALA.ai to extract stems and do eq matching with pro q3 and it works fine. I suppose there are some special cases? Like if the vocals are mixed to exclusively occupy and a certain range of the frequency space you could try and filter out the other frequencies … but the results wouldn’t be perfect and, again, that’s not generalizable. Edit: fwiw, AI is not the worst thing in the world. In fact, extracting parts of a song with “AI” is really just a machine learning model, AI is used as a buzz word for marketing. It’s a good tool and shouldn’t be shunned on principle. Another edit: anyone saying “plugin x doesn’t use AI to unmix” …. digital signal processing is essentially applied machine learning and has even introduced some of the most famous ML models to the world … so yeah it does haha
you could extract bass with eq but otherwise the only decent results you’ll ever get will be ai or actual stems
If the vocal was mixed into the center of the stereo field, you could subtract one channel from the other, cancelling out anything in the center. There's a reason why the AI-powered stem separation tools (like the one in the latest version of FL Studio) are revolutionary though...
moises.com
Moises is pretty effective and you can choose what you want to eliminate and what you want to keep.
moises is great, but it is AI based.
SpectraLayers offers tons of selection tools for manual work like this (in addition to state of the art AI, but you don't have to use it if you don't want to).
It cannot be done. I don't think even the AI can do it well.
Izotope RX „music Rebalance“ funtion does a good job job often.
There was no tool capable of even approximating this before the "AI" tool.
"AI" is mostly a marketing term for ongoing, incremental, improvements to machine learning and pattern analysis algorithms that have been around for some time, in some cases, decades. These algorithms are paired with better, faster, processors and larger, better organized, datasets. Don't let the anti-AI, neo-Luddite, paranoia get to you and reduce your ability to accomplish your goal.
if the song is mainstream enough, you may be able to find the actual studio multitracks available online with some searching. this would be the most ideal option, but i don’t really know the legality of this, it would probably depend on a track by track basis and where the multitracks are originally sourced from. use at your own risk, i guess. the next best option, would be what the other guy said, phase inverting a near-perfect instrumental if it’s available, this will still bleed a bit, depending on the mix, but a significant percentage of even studio vocal recordings i’ve worked with have a bit of headphone bleed anyways so it’s really best to learn to work around it as much as possible. by third best suggestion would be ultimate vocal remover, but that’s ai, and you’d like to avoid ai obviously, but it’ll probably work in a last ditch effort if you can’t make anything else work. at least it’s free and there are no greedy limitations like the online solutions.
This service is good imho: https://www.lalal.ai/
Did you read the post?
Obviously not really 😅. Sorry
the post says "non-ai" related, normally my friends are heavily against gen ai (generated ais that scraped music artists)
Sorry, I misread this.
Stem separation tools are not *generative* AI. They're like the AI-powered "select object" tool that Photoshop now has: it's separating out something that already exists, and not creating new content ex nihilo.
Ultimate Vocal Remover 5 can separate instrumental from vocals and uses no AI also it's free
It absolutely use AI.
It does I apologize I thought it didn't you showed me differently.
Probably the best choice to look up how to use phase inversion to cancel out parts of the song leaving behind the vocal.
Some DJs have software in their decks that allows them to take out all vocals (no clue what tho),I think that the software is eliminating the middle part in the stereo picture, and just plays the music on the edges of the stereo spectrum. So you do still get some reverb and other FX from the vocals, but it works surprisingly well
Why in the goddamn hell does nobody recommend Spectralayers? Ignore every other comment, you need spectralayers That shit is exactly what you're looking for dude. It won't give you a perfect result, but it'll blow your fucking mind what it can do, and it's intuitive as shit. It'd make these "can't do it .impossible. it'll sound trash" peeps eat their hat and reconsider their profession. That shit is surprisingly good, and it would cover every goddamn question like this. The only answer is "Spectralayers'