Photo by Hitesh Choudhary on Unsplash
found something that may be a game changer to many of us bedroom producers. in all honesty, i don't even know why i haven't remembered this would likely be a thing in the current day and age.
i'm talking about a website. it's an AI driven tool that allows for users to filter any sound file and hence obtain the separate stems of instruments and voices.
this is pretty useful because acapellas, for example, stopped being a real thing since vinyl was overtaken by the CD. exception made for a few niche releases, it's pretty hard to find decent acapellas out there that have been released and mastered as such. and undergoing the process of digitally filtering a voice from a song can be not only extremely time consuming, but also pretty expensive from the software standpoint.
take as an example Izotope's top notch tool RX-9, that a vast number of producers use. the Standard (limited) version starts at $399, but the complete Advanced version costs a whooping $1,199. that's a lot of money.
now, i'm not saying the software is not worth the money. it is. it's an absolutely amazing tool that allows you to control and shape sampled sounds like no other. you can have a peek here to have an idea of what it can do. however, i am saying that not all of us bedroom producers have $1,199 to spend on such a very specific tool.
AI to the rescue
in comes the present day and age, and the advent of Artificial Intelligence. i'd like to invite you to explore this website on your own: https://www.lalal.ai/#
it's basically an AI tool that allows you to do precisely what RX-9 sort of does, but it's free of charge. all you need to do is load a file, and choose the type of filtering you want to have processed.
in the example above i've used Bob Dylan's "Walk on the Wild Side" and filtered the drums, but as you can see there are options to filter many other instruments and the vocals (which is an absolute game changer for the acapellas alone, at least for me).
you are even allowed to listen to a preview of the file before deciding if you want to commit to the full processing. you are also given three plans to choose from, being that one of them is free and the other two are a one time payment that will allow you for greater uploads and extra file formats.
the free version, however, will allow you up to 2GB upload and mp3, flac, and ogg file types. more than enough to start having some fun, i'd say. i'll be diggin' in full throttle now :)