Most have been told that there is a magic device or software that will remove vocals from an original track to use as a performance track, in particular gospel soundtracks to use in church and at events. There are a few companies out there that forge a concerted effort to do such, but aren't very effective. There is always a faint trace of the lead and background vocals, and has an echo effect that distorts the instrumental part of the track.
I am Stephen Saunders, a gospel musician and vocalist for the past 20 years in Texas. I have performed at various venues and shared the stage with Donnie McClurkin, John P Kee and others. Although I play piano and organ, there have been moments that a gospel soundtrack would have been more helpful so that I could be in front of my audience to minister and sing. I have done plenty of exploration on these types of devices and software, which are mentioned in this article, as well as an alternative for high quality soundtracks (visit www.saundersmusiccompany.com).
The most accepted solution is a karaoke machine. This device basically suppresses the pre-recorded voice track of the original singer while permitting the background music soundtrack to continue playing. A basic karaoke machine consists of a music player, microphone inputs, and a means of converting the pitch of the played music. This is done by center channel manipulation, which takes advantage of the fact that in most music the vocals are in the center. This means that the voice, as part of the music, has equivalent volume on both stereo channels and no phase difference. Most machines seek to use this process so that one can feed regular songs into the machine and remove the voice of the original singer; however, this is rarely effective.
Recent years have seen the development of new software techniques based on the Fast Fourier Transform algorithm. MTU's (Micro Technology Unlimited) latest version of Vogone performs better than most karaoke and audio editing software, and has a feature that makes it very simple to adjust the distinctive parameters for minimal vocal leak-through. Although still not perfect, the results are usually much better than the old technique, because the stereo left-right comparison can be done on individual frequencies. Another product is the Thomson Vocal Eliminator (VE4), which is a hardware device and thus more expensive than Vogone. It simultaneously fine tunes and optimizes the elimination over 300 times per second. The VE4 removes more vocal with less influence on the background instruments than what has been possible in the past. Nevertheless, a degrading of the original track still occurs.
Finally, in my opinion, the best way to obtain sing-along tracks is to buy them from a karaoke provider. These are not the original performances, but studio creations of high quality tracks for thousands of popular songs. These companies acquire licensing permission from the original song author and reconstruct the track as close to the performance of the artist. Again, almost all of these companies only focus on the popular billboard songs.
My company (Saunders Music Company) provides custom orders on tracks of any genre and time period, ranging from Andrae Crouch and Walter Hawkins, to the Williams Brothers and Kirk Franklin. For a listing of recent tracks, visit our site at saundersmusiccompany.com.
I am Stephen Saunders, a gospel musician and vocalist for the past 20 years in Texas. I have performed at various venues and shared the stage with Donnie McClurkin, John P Kee and others. Although I play piano and organ, there have been moments that a gospel soundtrack would have been more helpful so that I could be in front of my audience to minister and sing. I have done plenty of exploration on these types of devices and software, which are mentioned in this article, as well as an alternative for high quality soundtracks (visit www.saundersmusiccompany.com).
The most accepted solution is a karaoke machine. This device basically suppresses the pre-recorded voice track of the original singer while permitting the background music soundtrack to continue playing. A basic karaoke machine consists of a music player, microphone inputs, and a means of converting the pitch of the played music. This is done by center channel manipulation, which takes advantage of the fact that in most music the vocals are in the center. This means that the voice, as part of the music, has equivalent volume on both stereo channels and no phase difference. Most machines seek to use this process so that one can feed regular songs into the machine and remove the voice of the original singer; however, this is rarely effective.
Recent years have seen the development of new software techniques based on the Fast Fourier Transform algorithm. MTU's (Micro Technology Unlimited) latest version of Vogone performs better than most karaoke and audio editing software, and has a feature that makes it very simple to adjust the distinctive parameters for minimal vocal leak-through. Although still not perfect, the results are usually much better than the old technique, because the stereo left-right comparison can be done on individual frequencies. Another product is the Thomson Vocal Eliminator (VE4), which is a hardware device and thus more expensive than Vogone. It simultaneously fine tunes and optimizes the elimination over 300 times per second. The VE4 removes more vocal with less influence on the background instruments than what has been possible in the past. Nevertheless, a degrading of the original track still occurs.
Finally, in my opinion, the best way to obtain sing-along tracks is to buy them from a karaoke provider. These are not the original performances, but studio creations of high quality tracks for thousands of popular songs. These companies acquire licensing permission from the original song author and reconstruct the track as close to the performance of the artist. Again, almost all of these companies only focus on the popular billboard songs.
My company (Saunders Music Company) provides custom orders on tracks of any genre and time period, ranging from Andrae Crouch and Walter Hawkins, to the Williams Brothers and Kirk Franklin. For a listing of recent tracks, visit our site at saundersmusiccompany.com.
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