Please forgive my stupidity here, I am just a trumpet player. But, I am trying to create a accompaniment CD that I can practice my horn with. I want to take a pre-recorded Chris Botti CD and remove his trumpet track so that I can play along with the CD without his trumpet being heard. Is this possible? Alesis makes a little machine/CD player that removes the vocal track from most CD's, so, I bought one and tried it. But, it didn't work at all. Anyone know of any other options or methods?
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Hi and welcome to RO. The phase-canceling trick those devices u
Hi and welcome to RO.
The phase-canceling trick those devices use worked much better on older recordings.
The degree to which those devices can remove vocals (or anything else) is based on how the original recording used the stereo field. It can only diminish things that are dead-center in the stereo image. Often lead vocal is right down the middle, so by reversing the phase of just one channel you cancel out anything that was in the center. Unfortunately that often includes other prominent parts of the sound - kick drum, bass guitar, keyboards, etc. So even if they remove the lead vocal, there is still a giant hole in the mix from other instruments that have been phase-cancelled. Also you will never get rid of the ghosts in anything modern that uses a nice stereo reverb. Even if you could miraculously eliminate the lead-vocal (or solo trumpet), you will still hear it mixed back through the reverb.
You'll save yourself a lot of aggravation by:
A) Looking for Karaoke tracks of the standards to play along with.
B) Booking studio musicians to create your very own Karaoke tracks.
C) Getting to know Mr. Botti personally and gain access to his master recordings.
Or D) "Get real good at programming Finale."
I wish I had better news for you, but you can't remove one instrument any other way.
Get real good at programming Finale.
Get real good at programming Finale.