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How to Remove Vocals From a Music CD

When a song is recorded, the instrumentals and vocals are layered together and combined at different times to form the complete song. This means that it is possible to manipulate the track to remove the vocal layer, leaving only the instrumentals on the song. This process can be very useful for someone who wants to create their own karaoke CD, or for creating a backing track to play along with their own instruments.

Instructions

    • 1

      Insert a CD that has the song, or songs, from which you wish to remove the vocals. Open "Windows Media Player" by either double-clicking the icon or pressing the "Start" button at the lower left corner of the screen and searching through the computer's "Program Files." Select the "Rip" tab at the top of the program and check mark any track you wish to save to your computer. Click the "Rip" button located at the bottom right corner of the program and wait for the process to complete.

    • 2

      Download the free, "Cross-Platform Sound Editor" from audacity.sourceforge.net. With this program, you will be able to remove the vocal from any song you choose.

    • 3

      Click "File" and then "Open" from the top toolbar menu of the program and select a song that you would like to edit. Once you open the song, a blue needle readout of the song will appear in the center of the program. Directly to the left of this readout, click the black arrow which will open a drop down window. Scroll through the menu and select "Split Stereo Track." This will create two separate readouts of the song.

    • 4

      Click the bottom readout so that it is highlighted and move your cursor to the toolbar and select the "Effect" button. This will open a drop down menu, in which you need to select "Invert."

    • 5

      Click the black arrow button to the left of each of the readouts. For both readouts select "Mono" from the list that opens. Click the top readout and you will see that when you press "Play" the song will have no vocals. You can then save the newly edited song to a location of your computer and then burn all of your edited tracks onto a blank CD.

Recording Music

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