Write an article based on this "Get a stereo MP3 of the song. Import the MP3 to a new project in Audacity. Verify that the track is a stereo track. Select a part of the song with vocals to test. Open the "Effects" menu. Select "Vocal Reduction and Isolation" from the menu. Set your vocal reduction parameters. Set the "Low Cut for Vocals" cutoff. Set the "High Cut for Vocals" cutoff. Click "Preview" to test the current values. Change the settings if you run into issues. Click "OK" to apply the filter to the entire track. Listen to the track."
Now you'll use Audacity's Vocal Reduction filter to reduce vocals in the song. If you're not sure that your MP3 is stereo, try listening to it with headphones. If it's stereo, you may hear different sounds and volumes in the right and left ear pieces. Importing the song into Audacity is the only surefire way to know whether or not the song is in stereo. It's also best to get the highest possible quality you can findlook for 320 kbps files, if possible. Open Audacity, and then: Click to expand the File menu at the top of the screen. Navigate to "Import" > "Audio" Locate and double-click your MP3 track to open it. If this MP3 is in stereo, the track will show 2 channels. This means you'll see 2 long visuals of the song (2 long waveforms) stacked on top of one another. You'll also see the word "Stereo" in the sidebar just beneath the track name. Before making any final changes, you'll want to select about 5-10 seconds of the song that has lead vocals so you can preview your changes. Here's how: Click the mouse in the time bar just above the track to play it from that spot. Find a place in the song where vocals occur for about 5-10 seconds. Hover the mouse over the tracks until your cursor appears. Click and drag to highlight the part of the song to preview. Now that you have a selection defined to preview, you can test removing the vocals. This effect helps remove vocals that are at the center of the track with other instruments spread around them. Most modern music is mixed this way, though there are exceptions. These settings define how the effect will run on the main vocals. Leave "Action" set to "Vocal Reduction. This ensures that you're reducing the vocals instead of reducing the music. "Strength" should be "1," which just means "apply this affect at it's normal strength." You may need to increase this to "2" later if the vocals are particularly loud. This value will determine the lowest frequency (Hz) to be removed from the track. You may have to come back and adjust these values later, depending on the result. If the vocals you want to remove are very low and have a lot of bass (e.g. Barry White, Leonard Cohen), type "100" into the box. For vocals that are low but less bassy (e.g. Drake, Toni Braxton), start at "100." For most mid-range vocals (e.g. Beyonce, Bruce Springsteen) set this value to "120." For vocals that are very high (e.g., children's voices, Mariah Carey), set this value to "150." If you still hear the vocals perfectly after you make the change, you can come back and set this to "200." This is the top frequency of the vocals. Going too high may cut out higher-pitched instruments in the song, but not going high enough may not capture all the vocals. You can always undo your changes and return to this screen to make adjustments. For almost all vocals, setting this value to "7000" should work fine. Note that backup vocals can usually not be removed with this method, as they are often on a different track. Note that if there's reverb on the vocals or other types of processing, the lead vocals will not disappear completelyyou may hear a "ghost" vocal in the background. When you're singing over that, it will seem like it's your voice being reverberated! If the preview doesn't sound the way you hoped: If you find that a lot of the bass in the song is missing, try increasing the Low Cut value by 20 Hz until you find a good balance between bass and vocal-removal. If deeper parts of the vocals are coming through, try reducing the Low Cut by 20 until a good balance is found. Try setting Strength to "2" if adjusting the Low Cut doesn't work. If you've changed the parameters and hear no change to the vocals, this song is not mixed in a way that is compatible with this feature. When you've found parameters that sound good in the preview, click "OK" to filter the entire song. This may take a few minutes, depending on your computer and the length of the song. Listen to the main vocalsWhile you may not be able to remove every last trace of the vocals, you should be able to cut much of their sound using this filter as long as vocals are mixed in the center of the track. To undo your changes, click "Edit > "Undo Vocal Reduction and Isolation."