Recording along with origanal

[Kevin Dean]

It's probably been asked but , I'm getting a video done soon with me playing along with a original . Is there a way of removing the bass from the original track or just roll the bass frequency off ..I'll be doing my own version as I'm using a Roland GR55 to emulate brass & strings at the same time ..cheers . A friend of mine that has just done a Film & sound degree has offered to do it with His gear & just wants the experience .

[Skol303]

In a word... no. There's no way to remove just the bass from an original track without affecting the song overall. Unless of course it's a song written by your band and you have the individual studio files available, in which case it's very easy - just mute the bass track!

The best you can do is use an EQ and/or High-Pass Filter (HPF) to reduce the bass. Trouble is, bass frequencies extend much higher up the frequency range than we tend to think, so you [i]will[/i] end up eating into the mid-range and pretty much every other instrument in the process. But you can certainly have a stab at dampening the bass sufficient for a play-along video, no problem.

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[i]As an aside: there's a neat trick that can be done with vocals if you have an instrumental copy of a song as well as the original. Assuming both versions are identical, you can use the instrumental version to completely isolate the vocal part by inverting the waveform of one and mixing them together.[/i]

[Kevin Dean]

Thanks very much .

[lurksalot]

[quote name='Skol303' timestamp='1499439336' post='3331592']


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[i]As an aside: there's a neat trick that can be done with vocals if you have an instrumental copy of a song as well as the original. Assuming both versions are identical, you can use the instrumental version to completely isolate the vocal part by inverting the waveform of one and mixing them together.[/i]
[/quote]

stupid question time , granted probably theoretical due to accuracy issues , but supposing you re-recorded the bass line along to the original , inverted this wave form and mixed together , would that not eliminate the bass track

I'll get my coat

[Dad3353]

[quote name='lurksalot' timestamp='1499450662' post='3331691']
stupid question time , granted probably theoretical due to accuracy issues , but supposing you re-recorded the bass line along to the original , inverted this wave form and mixed together , would that not eliminate the bass track

I'll get my coat
[/quote]

Yes (theoretically...), along with any other stray frequencies shared from the other instruments and voices. Nice try, though; 6/10 for effort.

[roman_sub]

As bass is normally panned dead center, I suspect you may have better luck if you apply Mid-Side approach (which would allow you to get at the center, without affecting the rest of the mix). You could then try to precisely target the most prominent bass frequencies.

You have to be careful to avoid removing the bass drum "thump" however, as it's likely to be in the same frequency area as the bass...

I'd be happy to have a go at doing this - I got a few new tools and this could be good practice for me. Feel free to drop me a PM, and then you'd need to send me the MP3 / WAV

cheers
Roman

[Dood]

[quote name='Kevin Dean' timestamp='1499438157' post='3331581']
It's probably been asked but , I'm getting a video done soon with me playing along with a original . Is there a way of removing the bass from the original track or just roll the bass frequency off ..I'll be doing my own version as I'm using a Roland GR55 to emulate brass & strings at the same time ..cheers . A friend of mine that has just done a Film & sound degree has offered to do it with His gear & just wants the experience .
[/quote]

What's the track?