How Does One Isolate Guitar, Bass, Keys, Drums, Vocals etc

Bellycaster

Following a lot of viewings of Rick Beato vids and lots of others "Isolated Guitar" over the last couple of years, I was wondering how these people isolate certain instruments from songs?

Can I do it by importing an MP3 File of a song into my Cubase?

I'm guessing it must be more complicated than this?

However, I'd love to know how it's done as this was one of the earliest things I used to try to do, by ear, to analyse songs waaaay back in the 80's before anything was possible like this in the average household.

Love this Tears for Fears breakdown by Rick as well, perhaps their best ever song.



Thanks.

Grangousier

I think Beato gets stems of the original multi-tracks from artists. Another popular source is when people have extracted the separate tracks from Guitar Band. The best you can do with a mixed track is isolate the centre (some plugins do Mid-Side processing, which can get rid of the vocal in a bodgy sort of way). 

Freebird

There is a huge torrent that has all the rock band stuff.

Check out this thread for something similar:

http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/144454/the-klos-sessions

Stuckfast

They're using original multitracks or stems.

But check DeMIX Pro out, if you get a chance -- it can do some pretty amazing stuff.

www.audiosourcere.com

wave100

Also the latest version of Izotope RX has abilities in this direction, I am led to believe. Haven't tried it myself though.

Bellycaster

Thanks guys for the input so far, I imagined it would be more complicated than I thought.

What are "Stems" and how does someone get hold of original multitracks @Stuckfast ;

I am completely unaware of what original multitracks are? My only knowledge is that there is a mastertape of a recording that has been mixed down?

octatonic

You probably won't be able to get hold of the original multitrack unless the artist releases them.
Sometimes they turn up online or via industry channels )for instance when I worked at SSL we had access to a lot of Peter Gabriel multitrack and stems, as he owned the company.

Stems are mixes of individual elements, such as bass, drums, vocals, guitars, all mixed to stereo pairs.
It is not uncommon for some people to mix down to stems, which are given to the mastering engineer, rather than have them master a 2 track mix down. I don't do this myself, usually.

There is another way to remove individual elements which is to use Izotope RX, as mentioned above- it uses machine learning to isolate elements in a mix- it is pretty good but not as good as going back to the original multitracks.

roberty

You can rip stems from Rock Band and those sorts of games. Many stems from these have been uploaded to YouTube. Metallica's Death Magnetic was remixed from rock band stems and distributed online without the brick wall mastering that plagued the fidelity of the commercial release 

roberty

Bellycaster

Wow, thanks again, it seems there is much more to this than I thought. I think I need to go away and get a better understanding of the actual basics of recording first.......I mean, not like the recording I do on here, but the pro recordings for the top bands.

roberty

Bellycaster said:

Wow, thanks again, it seems there is much more to this than I thought. I think I need to go away and get a better understanding of the actual basics of recording first.......I mean, nit like the recording I do on here, but the pro recordings for the top bands.

Producing is an art, and engineering is another art. And mixing is a third art

Freebird

roberty said:

You can rip stems from Rock Band and those sorts of games. Many stems from these have been uploaded to YouTube. Metallica's Death Magnetic was remixed from rock band stems and distributed online without the brick wall mastering that plagued the fidelity of the commercial release 

As mentioned above there is a 70+GB torrent floating around the internet. They are very useful for learning how songs are constructed.