Removing singer’s voice or vocals from an Mp3 file has become very important in many events. Sometimes, we want to remove vocals to add our own voice in the song. Sometimes, we want just the instrumental music of a song to play or mix with other sound effects to create party/dance music. So, if you have the problem to remove vocals from a song then here I am telling you two ways to extract instrumentals out of an Mp3 file.
The first way is using the audio editor Audacity. The reason to use this audio tool to remove vocals from Mp3 is that it is free and easy to use and the sound editor has direct options to remove vocals from mp3.
Using Audacity to Remove Vocals from Mp3
To start with using Audacity to remove singer’s voice and other vocals, firstly download it for free from here. Choose the appropriate version according to your operating system (Windows, Mac and Linux), download and install the software.
Now, open the music file of which you want to remove vocals. You can either browse (File >> Import >> Audio) or drag-n-drop your music file to Audacity. Once to add the song, Audacity will process and represent it like this:
Now, there are actually two ways to remove vocals from an audio file using the software. The first way is using Invert effect and the second way is using the Vocal Remover effect directly. Both ways are quick and may provide output instrumental music of your original music file in different quality so, to achieve the best effect it is recommended to try both of these methods in your original music file to check which gives the better output.
Remove Vocals from Music using Audacity Invert Effect
To remove vocals from an audio file using Audacity’s Invert effect. Firstly, if you are on the same screen as the screenshot shows, you need to Split Stereo Track into left and right stereo. Do this by clicking the downward arrow at the left sidebar and choose Split Stereo Track option.
Now, you can choose either of left or right stereo to remove vocals. Click the stereo track (left or right) and navigate to Effect >> Invert from the top menu. The reason to use Invert effect is that Audacity invert effect flips the audio upside-down and hence it cancels the identical audio if uninverted and inverted tracks are mixed together.
Now, the final step is to change both left channel and right channel audio track to Mono. Do this by choosing “Mono” option from the downward arrow drop-down menu which is appearing in the left sidebar for both the audio track.
Listen to song now using the Play button provided above and you’ll hear only music of the original song and no vocals. You can now either save this editing as Audacity project using File >> Save to do other modifications later or if you are happy with the output and just want to export the resulted audio in .Mp3 format, do this by exporting the song using AAudio.
Remove Vocals from Music using Audacity Vocals Remover
Removing Vocals from any music using Audacity Vocal Remover effect is just a work of few clicks. You only need to open the audio in Audacity, select its track and use Effect >> Vocals Remover tool in Audacity. It will open a pop-up box, keep all settings default and just click “OK”. It will automatically remove vocals from your audio file.
However, Vocal Remover tool is best suited for audio files with center-panned vocals. It assumes vocals are available at the center channel which is correct in most of the cases but in some complex audio files where there is layered channel vocals, echo, reverb, left & right tracks manipulation etc., this effect is not going to work perfectly.
But if you want to achieve the best result and you have only this free software available, checking both the methods is recommended.
If you have any problem in following steps properly, watch the below video to remove vocals from Mp3 using same methods of Audacity:
https://youtu.be/6KLVVLza4Dg
The instrumental music you will get after following any of the above methods of free audio editor Audacity are ok for personal use but not good enough to use professionally because if you listen carefully, you will still hear vocal but in very low voice.
So, if you have the need to achieve crystal clear instrumental music from original song by removing vocals perfectly, I will recommend you to use the PRO audio editor Melodyne.
It allows you to literally select every single note and remove vocals from it. So, you can remove echo, reverb, layered vocals and other noise to achieve perfect instrumental music by removing vocals from a song. The software also allows you to add tons of effects to your audio to provide it the best level of compilation you can provide.
