Good 'karaoke' program.

I didn't know where to put it but I guess it would fit here, does anyone know of a really good program that can edit MP3s (or any other audio for that matter) so that it removes the lyrics? Sometimes you just want to listen to MUSIC you know? Like, you throw the sound file into the program, and it poots out into another directory a wordless version? TIA.

That is impossible.

However, you may sometimes have a bit of luck if the program takes the left channel and right channel and comes up with whatever waveform is directly in the center and subtracts that from the original waveform since a certain small number of songs have the vocals in the exact center.

It would sound like shit though and not only will you hear residual echoes in the other two channels, but you will also lose any instruments that are directly in the center.

tl;dr -- there is no way to do it.

>>2
Oh. Really? So the karaoke machines get special recordings? I didn't know that, I thought there was some weirdo sci-fi way of cutting out the lyrics. Shit. :\

>>3

Karaoke machines use instrumental versions of original music that is re-recorded by either a) the original producers of the music, or b) a group whose job it is to take sheet music of the original music and recreate it without the lyrics.

On Japanese singles (and from what I hear a few American ones, though I've never seen them myself) you will see an A-side, a B-side, the karaoke version of the A-side and the karaoke version of the B-side.

When you buy Karaoke CDs you get basically a CD full of instrumentals. There is no way of removing the vocals because to a computer they are just more sound and mixed completely into the waveform.

It's like taking an image macro with text written all over it and trying to run it through an automated program to get rid of the text. It can't be done, because by the time the final product (the image) has been created, the pixels are all mixed together and whatever was behind the text has been irreparably lost unless you either know what was there before and can redraw it or if you have the original PSD file and can just remove the text.

By the same token, producers mix the output from vocals, mike, drums, and guitars and synths all together from separate inputs and then spit out a fully blended-together soundwave. To a computer, sound is sound without any special meaning.

ah, thanks for the explanation. Learning is fun!
Didn't know they had dual-sided stuff in Japan either. Good analogy too. I'll remember that longer now.

They don't do dual-sided CD singles in Japan. The terms "A-side" and "B-side" are a throwback to the vinyl days when the two songs were recorded on opposite sides of a record. "A-side" and "B-side" are now just terms for the title track of the single and an additional song respectively, not their relative locations on the disc. Japan's CD singles are generally just four tracks (two with vocals, two without), usually on one of those dinky 8cm mini CDs.