RipX stem Plugin for Backing Tracks or Acappella

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RipX stem Plugin for Backing Tracks or Acappella

Postby roger bayliss » Fri Mar 18, 2022 10:18 am

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Re: RipX stem Plugin for Backing Tracks or Acappella

Postby roger bayliss » Fri Mar 18, 2022 10:37 am

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Re: RipX stem Plugin for Backing Tracks or Acappella

Postby SJB » Fri Mar 18, 2022 12:48 pm

I have just had a go over 4 days of the trial period.
I have taken vocal numbers and split them out mainly into Bass and Drums. This is because in our open sessions we don't have a drummer and also sometime no bass player.
It worked pretty well on most tracks. I would think it would struggle on some modern tracks which have loads of processed sound in them.
I did clean up one vocal with Ripx - luckily it did not need much on that one.

One other track where there were extensive lead breaks with no singer I noted lead breakthrough. I used the DAW to get rid of this issue by simply deleting the audio between verses.

I contacted the company about licensing. Apparently you get a license for three machines.
I wonder what the situation would be if the original artists found out that people were using parts of their tracks to produce new tracks?
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Re: RipX stem Plugin for Backing Tracks or Acappella

Postby roger bayliss » Fri Mar 18, 2022 4:00 pm

I have had a free 5 day licence to try RipX.

I tried Wonderful Land and Peace Pipe first.

Did not split it into separate tracks on either of those , but was able to identify guitar parts and manually edit them out , but that was not how it should work though. Have had better success using the older methods !

Maybe its the way the Shadows tunes were mixed . Obviously it works with other tunes according to others.
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Re: RipX stem Plugin for Backing Tracks or Acappella

Postby roger bayliss » Fri Mar 18, 2022 6:26 pm

Have tried Shadows vocal recordings and it correctly isolated the vocals, so it was really easy to generate a backing track by deleting the vocals. You could also delete ghe backing and have an Acapella vocal as well.

Problem is all the vocals go onto one track and most of the backing instruments into another and maybe a bass part and percussi9n in their own track, so not perfect in anyway, but you can get a decent result for making your own backing from existing vocal records.

It is also possible to manually edit either the lead guitar or the backing set out leaving either guitar or backing, but does not do it automatically , which is a shame.

So it is useful for vocal tracks, but instrumental tracks require manual editing , taking time .
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Re: RipX stem Plugin for Backing Tracks or Acappella

Postby SJB » Fri Mar 18, 2022 10:23 pm

I came to the same conclusion in that the rhythm and lead all end up on the stem (track) called "Other".
If you are going to work on a lot of vocals its well worth it.
But if Roger does manage break down an instrumental it would be nice to get some feedback.
Rogers pointer to the demo is the best one I have seen so far.
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Re: RipX stem Plugin for Backing Tracks or Acappella

Postby roger bayliss » Sat Mar 19, 2022 1:31 am

Here's another demo video which shows typical results , the vocals are quite good isolations, which is what I found , but the guitar instro file does not isolate the guitar, just like in the Shads recordings. But he does show the manual editing to get the guitar part out.


https://youtu.be/okLPXSm_FaY
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Re: RipX stem Plugin for Backing Tracks or Acappella

Postby fenderplucker » Sat Mar 19, 2022 2:51 am

My comment re-posted from the discussion on Charlie's site:

Unless the program has enough "artificial intelligence" to know what the melody line is to follow the notes of the lead guitar (for example), there are only two sources of information available to allow separation. They are spatial separation and spectral (i.e. frequency) separation.

An example of the former is lead guitar in the left channel and the rest in the right channel or, at worst, lead guitar in the center channel and the rest in either the left or right channels. An example of spectral separation might be a tune involving only lead, bass and drums, where the frequencies of the lead have little overlap with those of the other instruments.

However, on typical Shadows tracks comprising lead, rhythm, bass and drums, there are invariably sections of the tune where the notes or harmonics of the lead overlap with those of the rhythm (they are both just guitars with the same tuning) and also possibly any strings in the backing, and so spectral separation is absent. Furthermore, there are many Shadows tunes where the lead is in the same channel as the rhythm or other sections (e.g. strings, drums) and so spatial separation is absent. On such tunes it is very difficult to get separation of the lead without affecting the other instruments.

I have not yet found any programs that use all of the information available, and RipX seems to be no exception. I usually use a program like RiffStation (now available for free) to make use of any spatial separation and then clean it up with a spectral analysis program SpectraLayers to make use of any spectral information. But it can be a very time-intensive process, particularly if you have to edit the tune note by note in which case I am also using knowledge of the actual tune to follow the lead line! Natural intelligence??

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Re: RipX stem Plugin for Backing Tracks or Acappella

Postby roger bayliss » Sat Mar 19, 2022 11:37 am

Hi Paul,

I recall you saying you were using Spectralayers to clean things up sometime back. RIPX is very similar in use , but seems easier to use in my view for average users. None of these types of programs are perfect at separating the individual parts , but things have come along somewhat.

Processing a few Shadows tunes, I found that the lead guitar nearly always ended up on a layer mixed in with a few other instruments, such as rhythmn guitar and strings, keyboard, etc. Bass and drum percussion , kick drums seem to get picked out onto their own layer, but some bass notes might bleed into the layer with lead guitar etc. Vocals seem to get the best separation from what I can tell. RIPX does a great job finding vocals and harmony parts.

I think to make a backing from an instrumental song, best method would possibly be to identify the lead guitar part by ear and create a new layer for it to be moved onto. Once the layer is created, highlight a note in the layer and then click the little arrow next to the new layer name. That moves the lead notes to the new layer , splitting the lead guitar part. Eventually this will have the lead part on it's own layer, leaving the other instruments on other layers. This is fairly easy, because the lead guitar is usually loudest and can be picked out easiest from the instruments it is mixed up with on the layer created by RIPX.

Once the lead guitar is on it's own layer, we can easily create a backing track or Accapela by muting layers. The lead guitar layer could also be edited with RIPX Tools available where needed , to get the best possible results.

Will be time consuming of course , but the RIPX interface to me seems easy to identify notes and move or delete them working a few bars at a time.

Once we have an Accapela part , we can then give MATCH EQ a chance to work as per the thread on MATCH EQ.

If we are generating Accapela part to use soley in MATCH EQ , we only need z few bars for it to compare and do it's job, which cuts down on the work needed to get a suitable Accapela part for MATCHEQ.
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Re: RipX stem Plugin for Backing Tracks or Acappella

Postby fenderplucker » Sat Mar 19, 2022 3:00 pm

Hi Roger,

I was going to compare the results of my approach with the RipX demo but unfortunately the download of the unaltered test tune was only given in mono so RiffStation had nothing to work with.

I remember in the early days of trying to get good backing tracks, I tried removing Hank from the original mono vinyl recording of Apache using SpectraLayers but it was taking forever removing the lead note by note, even using the automatic harmonic tool. As with RipX the lead then appears on a separate layer that can be muted. But with so much of the lead overlapping with the rhythm, I was taking out bits of Bruce as well. I gave up after getting about halfway. It was much easier when I discovered the Stereo version!

Even with a good stereo original, on some tunes we still found it necessary to reinforce some of the components that got caught up in the lead removal by playing along, e.g. the acoustic rhythm on Dance on; some of the strings and triangle on Atlantis when the damped lead occurs in the same left channel.

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