Instrumentals

So for a while people have been asking me "Liana! How DO you make such great instrumentals!" and I've been like "IMMA WRITE A TUTORIAL!" This is maybe that tutorial. One part, at least. Because Buggy asked how I made the instrumental for the Platinum 9 Special Medley and I was like "Uuuuuuummmm no clue." Because I really DON'T know how the fuck I do anything. Every mix is a case-by-case deal and it's like you go into this deep dark secret cave of torture, black out, and wake up with a finished product, holding it in your hand with a bewildered look on your face. So tutorials are a bit difficult but here's what I did in this particular case. I'll be talking about other cases later.

YOU WILL NEED TWO THINGS:
- Adobe Audition because it has the "Center Channel Extractor."
- THE HIGHEST QUALITY RIP YOU CAN POSSIBLY GET YOUR HANDS ON! This is INCREDIBLY important. Maybe later I will make a sample of how an isntrumental sounds at 128 kbps, 192 kbps, 320 kbps and uncompressed. Stay tuned. But remember I am lazy.

TUTORIAL ONE: THE BASICS!
Copy your file twice.
On one copy, apply Effects>Stereo Imagery>Center Channel Extractor>Vocal Remove. We will call this file the instrumental.
On the other copy, apply Effects>Stereo Imagery>Center Channel Extractor>Acapella. This is the vocal rip.

So what you have is, essentially, the song and then two different halves of the same song.

NOW general picture of what to do: Have your instrumental at normal volume. Put your vocal rip underneath it at around -4 DB. This number is VERY liberal depending on what you want. Now, make cuts between where there are vocals and where there isn't. Set the vocal chunks to -10 or whatever. Cross fade the chunks in and out IN AS SNEAKY AS WAY YOU CAN COME UP WITH. Really huge drum beats are a good place for this.

Here's kind of an example of where the "sneaky" places are and WHY we keep the vocal rip at -5 and cut the words out at -8 or whatever. BBz - Yume to Genjitsu. I had the a capella at zero there and the lyric bits at -13 or something SUPER gay like that and it's not subtle at aaall, I have no clue what I was thinking. But you can hear when and where I fade in and out pretty well.

Also, look for repeating instrumental beats. Listen to 7 Kings - Destiny Love. This instrumental was naturally REALLY good, but the drum beats were in the center channel. However, in the choruses, the drum pattern was the same as in the intro. So everytime the choruses came up, I copy and pasted the intro drums in, which is why you can hear the violin from the beginning everywhere but thankfully it wasn't at all dissonant and sounded great.

Another example is in this Genki+ Instrumental I made for Michikosaki/my own amusement. In the original, the melody yasashii koe ga blahblah line axes out as . . . good as you could hope for with this song. The harmonies are all in strange channels. Since the instrumental just repeated four times, I copy and pasted that line and crossfaded it at appropriate parts so Msaki could mix us all doing the harmony.

In some super difficult cases, you might want to copy the original yet AGAIN and compress it/EQ it to bring out what's missing in the instrumental. I did that for Taste Your Stuff. I also did a buuunch of shit to that one.

Finally, use Effects>Special>Mastering. I have no clue wtf half those buttons do but if you play around with shit, you can make stuff sound good At the very least the 3 point EQ is a simple way to subtly bring out what might be missing or quieter.

TUTORIAL TWO: THE PLATINUM 9 SPECIAL MEDLEY
Original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57oyl-8vi28&feature=related
My Version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHVOC5drcnI
Pictures of the .SES file: http://liana.kawaii.nu/studio/medleyinst1.jpg | http://liana.kawaii.nu/studio/medleyinst2.jpg

First off, my file names and general system of organization are not meant to be understood by regular men. I know what means what and that's what counts. Okay. All you need to know is that the top track is the vocal rip, the second the instrumental, the third a mutated alien child compressed version of the original that brought out the bass and lower frequencies. The forth is . . . unrelated and I don't know why it's there but hey it's the solo track if you were curious.

- So I left the beginning jazzy bit at normal volume since it breaks so I could jump down to -9 for the vocals with no one noticing.
- Since the "love love love machine" bit was so machine-y and robotic and I'm lazy, I pushed how loud it is to help my robot effect sound good.
- At Sayu's "disco" since there was a break in the music there, we went down to -13 db for like six years since it was vocal intensive. That would leave a lot of the original vocals if you were trying to recreate a studio version but since concert dubs can get away with loud vocals it worked great.
- We took the repeated space noise thing at 3:20ish to sneaky slow crossfade the volume up for the Love Revolution rap since there are no vocals there. You can hear it happening but only if you know.
- The solos for the disco!Sexy Boy are at -7 since the instrumental is so cool but so sparse and I really wanted it to be heard so I got it juuuuuust to the point where you couldn't hear Ai or Reina anymore. It helps that myself and Spicy work really well with Ai and Reina and sound kind of similar so we hide them well.
- We go back up when the instrumental comes in at the break for "Fall In Love"
- We go back down after the drum beats and RIGHT before Risa sings since it changes drastically there so your ears don't notice the volume change.
- You don't see this but we went back up to 0 for the break between Manpower and Sexy Boy and then down to -10 for Manpower at Risa's "Mysterious!" Why was Love Machine/RR21 at -13, Sexy Boy at -7, and Manpower at -10? I don't know dude. Mixing Cave of Torture.
- We go back up for Linlin's little piano intro and then we basically MUTE the vocal rip entirely. Linlin's instrumentation is SO sparse that she's still left over a toooon in the echos. So I made sure Jko was lined up with her EXACTLY, syllable to syllable, and got rid of her as much as I could. I hid her way better than I expected I could, so yay!
- Back to -13 when Aozora kicks up.
- Up to -5 at the end with all the screaming. My girls had the energy but I wanted to do the instrumental justice.

THEN. Compressed mutated baby, I don't know what I did it it but it helped a little. Mixdown. Master. I just use "Warm Concert Hall" default setting for concert dubs and hang up my hat. I might have bumped up the high frequencies a bit, I don't remember.