How to make an instrumental from m4a or any audio file?

[cam89]

I was thinking that maybe with some aac editor or some thing that maybe I can remove the voice from a song and make an instrumental is this possible and if so someone please tell me what software I would need.Please help me.

[iantri]

Probably not, no. The computer does not understand the difference between voice and instrument; a computer audio file is (more or less) just a list of which frequencies exist at certain intervals (many, many, many intervals per second, obviously. 44k to 48k, unusually.). The distinction between instrument and voice happens inside through some magical process in the human brain.

There exist some products (and a Winamp plugin or two) that claim to remove vocals, but all they do is remove audio that is in the "centre" channel (in two channel stereo audio that would be stuff that is equally mixed between left and right). On some tracks, this might remove only the vocals. On others, it may strip the drums or more as well. Yet on others, where the vocals are not mixed in the centre, it will do nothing but make a mess of the audio. Either way, you'll get an audio file that has "artefacts" left in it, like a faint echo of the voice or nasty "tingling" high-frequency sounds.

The only other case that I can think of off the top of my head is older songs; some (less modern) stereo recordings are fairly simplistic; vocals in one channel, accompaniment in the other. Many Beatles songs are like this. Off of the top of my head I am thinking of "Eleanor Rigby" -- the main vocals are entirely in the right channel, with everything else being mixed in the centre or to the left.

However, in most cases, there is simply nothing you can do to remove vocals.