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Separating voice from background music?
Hello all,
I’m cutting my showreel and I’m working with final masters with no audio stems. I want to use a lot of sync from my shows so I could use some advice for helping to separate the sync from the backing music. I realise I probably can’t do this completely, but anything that will help suppress the background music and bring the voice forward even a bit would be a great help. I will be cutting in FCP 7 so advice relating to that specifically would be ideal but any tips to send me looking in the right direction would be gratefully received also.
Thanks,
Chris -
7 Replies
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Hello Christopher and welcome to the Cow Audio Forum.
Why do you want to mess with the show master? Was it not properly mixed?
Regards,
Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum LeaderWant better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
Ty Ford Blog: Ty Ford’s Blog -
It’s for my editing showreel. I want to create a montage to my own choice of music track featuring shots and bits of sync from all the shows I’ve worked on. I want to bring the voice out as much as possible from any background music that may be on the master so it doesn’t interfere with my montage music.
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Chris,
I know of no technology that will suppress existing music enough to not make that sound like a jumble.
TV shows like CSI do it all the time, but it’s still fiction.
Regards,
Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum LeaderWant better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
Ty Ford Blog: Ty Ford’s Blog -
Ok, thanks Ty.
The music beds are pretty quiet in the mix anyway, I was just wondering if there were anything extra I could do. I guess I’ll just have to play it by ear, some sound ok, others not so much.
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Hi
The only options you have are
1) Live with it the way it is
2) Contact the original source and get them to send you the separates
3) Drop the sync and replace entirely with your own music.The mixed music will have to be very low before youll be able to add new music over the top and not have them fight, and still be at a level where your dialogue still sits on top.
PeterPost Production Dubbing Mixer
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Christopher,
Try peaking the EQ around 3kHz and a little on each side of that. That’s where we hear most of the voice.
Regards,
Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum LeaderWant better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
Ty Ford Blog: Ty Ford’s Blog -
Even a high soprano voice fundamental only goes slightly over 1 KHz. 3 KHz is the upper limit of the primary harmonics of human voice. Depending on the nature of the voice, you could experiment with filtering out a band of frequencies as Ty suggests. But you may find better results a bit lower than 3K.
If the dialog is mixed to center and the music bed is stereo, you may be able to use one of the “center extraction” techniques for eliminating the lead/solo in songs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soprano
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_pitch_notation
https://musichack.wordpress.com/gw-tutorials/center-channel-extractionisolation/
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