[Steve J.]

I've been asked to perform Sanborn's "The Dream" for a wedding service in October. I need a CD backing track.

I could try a backing track myself but I'd like to avoid the time effort and I'm thinking the quality would be better if I could just have a karaoke version of the original.

Has anyone used this type of software to remove saxophone and what software is recommended?

or............ anybody have a backing track of this? I'd be happy to purchase.

 

[Blueskiestenor]

It would be a dream come true if they had software to remove sax, but I'm pretty sure it isn't possible (yet). TV isn't that realistic (=P). Please correct me if I'm wrong (and I would be very happy if I was wrong). The best way to "remove" sax, is to play with EQ's and Filters. It would take quite a while the edit out the frequency range of the sax, if you do choose this method, but I don't think that is a good idea, because while editing out sax frequencies, you lose a lot of the high hat sounds, and higher pitch instruments (if there are any). I think the best way is to record it by yourself, if you have access to instruments and recording equipment (and maybe some musicians if you don't want to do it yourself, or want to do it live). My $0.02 there.

 

[hakukani]

One way to try, with more or less success (it mostly sucks), is to reverse polarity on one of the channels, and pan the result mono. This will cancel out/get rid of most of the center channel (which is usually the vocal or solo instrument).

It doesn't work perfectly, and any effects (echo, reverb) that are not panned center in the original recording will remain as a 'ghost'.


It might work in a pinch, but in my experience it doesn''t work very well from an 'artistic' standpoint.

 

[Al Stevens]

The usual center channel removal algorithm works if the soloist is recorded dead center and if the other instruments are isolated from the soloist track. The result is a mono recording with an unbalanced mix. You often also lose the bass and/or drums, too.

There are free Winamp plugins that do center channel removal.

http://www.winamp.com

If you know how, you can do it with most audio-processing programs as well.

There are more sophisticated approaches that use fourier transforms and filters to zero the volume of all samples on both channels that have identical frequencies and volumes, perhaps after panning and other filtering preprocessing. Tricky at best. I've heard claims that they work, but I've never actually used one.

 

[Steve J.]

Thanks - good help folks. It seems you are all giving accurate advice. I did some more searching and found this article to be very informative http://www.ethanwiner.com/novocals.html

What I thought would be a great shortcut appears not to be worth the time and effort because of the possibility of opening up a musically unacceptable can of worms.

I'll come up with a personal version.