Hi, I am thinking of investing in a vinyl usb turntable, and ripping vocal samples from them into my macbook. I want to try to get the vocals isolated as best as possible so I can build a track around them. I've noticed this is very popular among many liquid funk artists. What is the most effective way to achieve this?
How to isolate vocals from vinyl?
- Thread starter alaska
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Prideinyouride
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- Nov 29, 2011
From as far as I know its a case of careful selection and surgical EQ. Choosing vocals that are as isolated as possible in the first place. You can't EQ out frequencies that share the same space as the vocals otherwise it ends up sounding so weak. Also look at Phase invertion, however this relies on you having a full track inc vocal and an instrumental. www.whosampled.com is a good site to see what songs have been sampled in your favourite tracks. You'll notice the majority of them will be lifted from quieter parts of the song so there's less to EQ out.
emersonsamuels
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- Jun 13, 2012
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- aotearoa
also finding an instrumental of the tune your sampling helps alot
Once you have the music only track you can do this:
1) Import both the Music and the Original into Audacity as 2 separate clips.
2) Line the two tracks up as exactly as possible using the Time-Shift Tool.
3) Highlight either track (doesn't matter which) and click effects -> invert.
4) Highlight both tracks and click Project -> Quick Mix (or Tracks -> Mix and Render).
Once you have the music only track you can do this:
1) Import both the Music and the Original into Audacity as 2 separate clips.
2) Line the two tracks up as exactly as possible using the Time-Shift Tool.
3) Highlight either track (doesn't matter which) and click effects -> invert.
4) Highlight both tracks and click Project -> Quick Mix (or Tracks -> Mix and Render).
While I've seen many tutorials phase inversion, I find the majority don't work. Especially the fact that I'm going to be sampling from old funk/soul records, the likelihood of me finding an instrumental of the song at all, let alone in the same format is highly unlikely. I guess careful EQ is really my only option...
I'm on a budget of 100 dollars.
Then your best bet is to try to find an old turntable on ebay and buy a phono preamp seperately. Or to not bother and stick with cutting up samples from material you find online. Just look at a typical review of a popular USB turntable, the Ion Profile:
- Joined
- Oct 19, 2011
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- Washington DC
As previously mentioned, grab an ebay second hand turntable (or maybe a local pawn shop has an old Technics 1200mk2) and record the signal via the turntable's RCA's to your audio interface @ 24bit uncompressed audio format (WAV/AIFF). You want the turntable's analog goodness to be captured at the highest quality possible. 
I understand if money is an issue. However, it would suck to spend money on a USB turntable only to discover that the quality of the ripped audio wasn't even of a quality high enough to be used in your tunes.
As far as isolating vocals, the phase inversion method can work if you have the same tune in both vocal and instrumental formats. However, the more instruments in the tune (i.e. the more frequencies) the worse the end result of the captured vocal. I would advise dabbling in a bit of EQ trickery, or find someone who can carry a tune to resing vocal for you.
Cheers.
I understand if money is an issue. However, it would suck to spend money on a USB turntable only to discover that the quality of the ripped audio wasn't even of a quality high enough to be used in your tunes.
As far as isolating vocals, the phase inversion method can work if you have the same tune in both vocal and instrumental formats. However, the more instruments in the tune (i.e. the more frequencies) the worse the end result of the captured vocal. I would advise dabbling in a bit of EQ trickery, or find someone who can carry a tune to resing vocal for you.
Cheers.