Clueless Newbie Questions, Karaokeing recordings. Options

[nickdaum]

My current hard and soft:
Mac G5 dual
M-Audio FireWire Solo
GarageBand
Audacity

I'm not a professional musician and don't intend to be. I just want to start singing and playing guitar Blues on my own as a retirement hobby.
Instead of using loops for the drums and bass backing I would like to use actual recordings of my favorite musicians as karaokes. Is it possible to remove both voice and guitar from a recording? If so how?

Secondary question, a little off topic: I need to buy an electric guitar, not too expensive, possiblly second hand.
As a matter of fact I'll stick to a slow tempo, like Blues does, so I don't need a "fast" guitar. I don't care about the look or the shape since I find them all ugly whether Strato or LesPaul or whatever. I don't care about accessing the highest treble notes.
I care only usability and sound.

What are the specs I should put on my list? Any brand you would recommend?

TIA

Nick

[nickdaum]

gonechan sez:

> well there's is a way to get the vocals 'faded' but you'll have
>to trade that with sound quality
That’s OK with me, I am loud enough ;-)
It’s for practice and what I need it the recording ‘sound and feel’ to help me getting in the mood.
Many Blues recordings are of a rather mediocre quality anyway.

About Amazing Slowdowner I checked the Roni Music site but it doesn’t mention any karaoke or fading function. Slowing down may help me keeping with the tempo though ;-)

Thanks for tips and advices.


Luke Davison sez:

>Vocal remover software...this is one, there's a few out there.

This one as well as most of the other ones I found are Windows apps. My issue is that I would like to remove guitar too.

Thanks anyway. Tips and links are always good since it may lead to something else which fits you needs.


zrobert sez:

>This is what I use. A Maestro Rhythm King MRK-2

I would rather not use a hardware solution. My purpose is to use actual recordings as backings. But I suppose I should forget about removing or fading specific instruments.

Thanks for your feedback.


halidom sez:

>If you check out pure-mac.com in the Audio or Music section…

Thanks for this very interesting site I didn’t know yet. It’s good to know the softs are for the Mac while most of the time the platform is not mentioned at all (which usually means is Windows only).
Yet I didn’t find what I looked for so far. I’ll have a closer look later.

Thank you all for your input

Nick