Which technique do you recommend for making acapellas?

[Hecta]

Hi, I've tried making acapellas a lot of times, from YouTube tutorials, but I can never make a good one
I always used Audacity, I listened to the DIY acapellas from this site and they sound awesome!!, could you tell me which technique do you recommend or use (and the software) for making acapellas?

 

[Shikari-Fox]

Most DIY acapellas are made from putting an official instrumental and the normal version into Audacity

This is what I did when I got the promo CD of You Me At Six's Bite My Tongue in the post:
1. Import the instrumental and original file
2. Zoom in and line them up directly
3. Invert one of the tracks and if they are the real files, it should mute the instrumental and just leave the vocals.

 

[Hecta]

Most DIY acapellas are made from putting an official instrumental and the normal version into Audacity

This is what I did when I got the promo CD of You Me At Six's Bite My Tongue in the post:
1. Import the instrumental and original file
2. Zoom in and line them up directly
3. Invert one of the tracks and if they are the real files, it should mute the instrumental and just leave the vocals.

I tried that a LOT of times, but it never works

 

[INGSOC]

"Which technique do you recommend for making acapellas?"

Any one that works. Try a variety to get best results, it's an imperfect science.

 

[Snare]

I tried that a LOT of times, but it never works

A few reasons why it might not:

1. As Shikari-Fox said, you have to make sure the two tracks are directly lined up or else it just won't work. Once they are closely lined up, you can use the track delay function in your DAW to do it precisely

2. Both tracks must be of the same quality (and I don't just mean if they're both 320 MP3s). If one track contains more frequencies than the other, it will not completely cancel out

3. Occasionally, studio instrumentals are mastered differently to the full tracks themselves since they do not require room for the vocals to sit in the mix. The subtle differences in compression and EQ mean that the tracks will never cancel each other out.


More importantly, even if you do manage to do it, the quality of the acapella will never be perfect. It's impossible to get a "studio" quality acapella unless the artist has released it themselves. That's what all the cool artists do anyway B)

 

[darkjuice]

I've known quite a few artists to speed up/ slow down their instrumentals a fraction of a second so that the inversion technique will not work. I do it when I release instrumental and vocal version as well.

 

[TheSonofsam]

I've known quite a few artists to speed up/ slow down their instrumentals a fraction of a second so that the inversion technique will not work. I do it when I release instrumental and vocal version as well.

I have done this too when bouncing out audio tracks for artists that didn't want their vocals used in a manner other than intended for. I've used Pro Tools to engineer acapellas from an inverted instrumental. Some programs have a vocal remover feature, and that can work depending on how the source file was mixed. It just does the same inversion trick but to the left channel and mixes it over the right channel or vise-versa. I have made a few Eminem acapellas from this technique. It does help to zoom in as close to each peak and valley to align it up. Good luck with your acapella making.

 

[Studio38]

Yes, that method works sometimes but not with all tracks and often will leave artifacts, but you shouldn't expect a Studio acapella when using any of these DIY methods