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How to Make an Acapella in Sound Forge

An "acapella", in contemporary studio recording parlance, is a lead vocal that has been isolated from the rest of the mix. There are several techniques for deriving acapellas. The one most often used is called "phase cancellation." This technique requires that the person deriving the acapella has an instrumentals-only version of the song. Instrumentals-only tracks are expensive and difficult to come by, forcing most people to turn to other methods. Using certain presets, Sony's Sound Forge can create an acapella using the original song file through a process called "spectral subtraction." This method is imprecise but will often produce a usable acapella.

Instructions

    • 1

      Open Sound Forge. Once it loads, open the "File" menu and choose "Open." A file selection dialogue will appear. Navigate to the song file you want to use to create an acapella and double-click it. A new track will appear in Sound Forge's workspace area, and the song's waveform will be displayed on the track.

    • 2

      Open the "Edit" menu and choose "Select All." All the song's waveform information will be highlighted.

    • 3

      Open the "Process" menu in the menu bar and choose "Pan/Expand." A dialogue box will appear. From the drop-down menu labeled "Preset," choose the "Normal Mix of MS Recording" option. Click the "OK" button on the left side of the dialogue.

    • 4

      Open the "Edit" menu in the menu bar and select "Set" from the "Selection" submenu. The set selection dialogue will appear. From the drop-down menu labeled "Channel," choose "Left." Click the "OK" button.

    • 5

      Open the "Edit" menu and select "Copy." Open the "Edit" menu again and select "Paste to New" from the "Paste Special" submenu.

    • 6

      Open the "File" menu and choose "Save As." Give the file a name and click "OK." Click the "Play" button. You will hear the vocals play back with little or no other sound information.

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