taking the vocals out of music

how do i reverse polarity? or pan to mono. to i just pan to left or right speakers?

Panning to Center will create a mono sound.
Most recording consoles have a button to reverse polarity. It's usually labeled Phase or may have a symbol of a circle with a line running through it.
Most consoles also come with a manual which should explain it's functions. You might find more detailed info there.
If there's no console used, you can create a cable that has it's pos and neg leads reversed. There's probably more info on that somewhere in all these forums.
I'm new to this site,but there should be a search button around here somewhere.
Hope this helps

You might wanna try Voice Trap from the [[url=http://[/URL]="http://www.cloneens…"]Clone Ensemble[/]="http://www.cloneens…"]Clone Ensemble[/] developer. It won't eliminate everything but yields a product good enough to practice to. And for twenty five bucks it's probably the most cost efficient solution out there. The green GUI is borderline horrible though :).

Although none of these units are perfect, one of the best ways is to use a digital vocal eliminator such as the Al**is V**al Zapp*r or the cd player for vocalists made by the same folks (which I personally own and highly recommend mainly because it can also transpose and change pitch and rythym on the fly which is pretty amazing to an old analog guy like me). I have also tried the digital version of the Th**pson vocal eliminator that came to me for repair a few years ago although it's a lot spendier. PM me if you can't figure out who I'm talking about.

Hope that helps you some.

before you spend funds on the suggestions of guitarbill, try this.
First try taking the stereo mix- pan to mono - reverse polarity on 1 channel.
Sometimes this works, sometimes it only works a little.
If it works well, but the bass dissapears, take one channel, and send it to a 3rd channel, - low pass filter around 100hz and mix in ever so slightly.
salt to taste and serve.
If all else fails, the previous suggestions might get you closer, but even they will tell you that there's only about a 30% chance of complete removal.
hope this helps

natural wrote:
If there's no console used, you can create a cable that has it's pos and neg leads reversed.

No. Doing this with a regular high Z cable (RCA or 1/4") will just short the signal to ground.

ggunn wrote: [quote=natural]
If there's no console used, you can create a cable that has it's pos and neg leads reversed.

No. Doing this with a regular high Z cable (RCA or 1/4") will just short the signal to ground.
Ahh yes, you are correct. I should have been more detailed that I was referring to a balanced setup. So, without a console I guess, he'll need a couple of DI's, some cable, a soldering gun, connectors, etc. In which case, it's probably better to buy one of the products mentioned earlier. But since this is the 'Recording' forum, I would think that there should be some kind of mixer involved.

Ah, yes. The marvels of DSP vocal elimination for $99 bucks. Or horsing around for hours and hours trying to get some of the way there. Makes perfect sense to me!