What is a simple, free software for splitting parts of a song and how would I use it?

[Nouw]

Hello! I'd like to ask you guys for a software I could use for splitting parts of a song. And by parts, I mean instruments[sub]timbre?[/sub]. This is so I can listen to each parts of a song individually. E.g. bass only, vocals only and etc. I'm trying to play a song on the piano and it would my job of figuring out the notes by ear much easier.

Thanks in advance guys! I'm sure you can recommend me something useful.

 

[Limecake]

Well, I'm sorry to say but there is currently no software or technology that can split the instruments apart from a song, once they are mixed together it all just becomes frequency.

However if the only reason you want to do this is to isolate the piano than you can try a couple of things, first if you have vocals in the song try to extract the center channel (usually found in an effects/processing dropdown menu) this will most likely work on most older music but a lot of new music it won't take out the vocals (since most new music uses panning to give vocals more rich sound)

you can also find the certain frequencies in an equalizer that effect the piano's notes. according to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_key_frequencies) the frequencies you're going to want to focus on are 20hz-4000hz (anything lower you won't be able to hear and it'll just make it bassey) if you push these frequencies up a little more and take the other frequencies down you should be able to hear the piano more clearly.

as for which program to use any DAW should be able to equalize. Audacity is free, I use adobe audition but anything will probably work.

 

[Nouw]

Snip

Damn it, it was worth asking! Thanks for the tip on isolating the piano. I have a query though, how do I exactly push the frequencies up? I have Audacity and thanks again.

 

[Esotera]

Snip

Damn it, it was worth asking! Thanks for the tip on isolating the piano. I have a query though, how do I exactly push the frequencies up? I have Audacity and thanks again.

It's sort of possible to do this using Vocal Remover & Equaliser, I was doing this last night. Results are a bit hit-and-miss though, depending on your original sample, as some instruments hit the same notes simultaneously. But it's as near as you're going to get.

For example, if you wanted to isolate the bass you'd want to select all the frequencies between 0-200Hz & lower/cut everything else.

 

[Limecake]

Damn it, it was worth asking! Thanks for the tip on isolating the piano. I have a query though, how do I exactly push the frequencies up? I have Audacity and thanks again.

as far as I know audacity only has the multitrack so you shouldn't have to worry about changing your view of the file (In Adobe Audition if you want to apply effects it needs to be done in the 'edit' view)

The first thing you're going to want to do is select the area you want to equalize, I assume you want to equalize the whole song so just highlight the whole thing.

now there should be a dropdown menu at the top called 'Effects' click it and drop down to the effect called Equalization. A box should open up looking like this ([link]http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Equalization[/link])

there should be two boxes right above the preview button (bottom left) make sure the box 'Graphic Equalizer' is selected (you can draw the curves but it's not as precise.) You should see sliders appear under the graph. This is where things will get a little trickier, start by dragging down sliders you know you aren't going to need (anything above 5-7k is a waste) and roll off anything lower than 40hz too since this is going to be almost all sub-bass.

now you're going to have an equalizer with mostly middle frequencies, this is where you're going to have to experiment a little, if you're audio is still too hard to understand you're going to have to move the sliders individually to find the piano frequencies. It's easiest if you preview your effects (with the 'preview' button) and then move one slider all the way up and preview again (so you can see which frequencies effect the piano) I wouldn't suggest leaving sliders all the way up though since this is an easy way to clip your audio (if the audio is too loud it'll distort and sound bad)

Also make sure you don't fully remove frequencies within your 'sweet spot' for the piano, just lower them.

uhh, to be honest I'm not exactly the best instructor but hopefully this helped.

 

[corsair47]

Basically what the guy above me said. Also in audacity you have a specific effect called vocal remover which removes voices if you want to listen to just the instruments. It's sorta at the bottom. That's as helpful as i can be, sorry I'm not an audio genius.