CeeDub-
while what you ask seems conceptually very simple, it is technically extremely difficult (if not impossible) to accomplish, unless you get source material (such as 'music minus one' kind of things) that is specifically designed for this, or the original multi-track so that you could re-create the mix w/o the vocal (which is not such an easy thing to do unless you are an experienced engineer / producer).
The only thing I am aware of is a hardware solution that has been on the market for 25 years or so, called a Thompson Vocal Eliminator (
http://www.ltsound.com/).
Maybe they have changed / improved it over the years, but when I looked into it many years ago, it 'worked its magic' by summing the two stereo channels after inverting the phase of one of them, thereby canceling any signal that appeared equally in both of the channels.
This frequently does eliminate the lead vocal from many recordings, since the lead vocal is often center panned (sent equally to the left and right channels). But it also eliminates all other musical signals that are center panned (typically the bass drum and bass guitar, and sometimes the piano, rhythm guitar, et.al.). And if a particular recording does not have the lead vocal center panned, the TVE will
not remove it.
This approach can also result in some weird audio 'artifacts' from the phase inversion of sounds that are
not panned hard right or hard left (as are most instruments in multi-track studio recording, in order to simulate a realistic 'sound stage')
There might be some expensive plug-in for ProTools, Digital Performer, Logic, or Cubase to do this kind of thing, but then you are getting into not only serious buckos, but a steep learning curve as well.
- kbeartx
