I recently came across a web-based app, melody ml, that is pretty neat. If you upload an MP3 file its software will separate and put together MP3s of just the bass part, just the drums part, just the vocals, and all the instruments without the vocals. If you’re a bassist, for example, and you need to transcribe and learn the bass part to a song this could be a helpful tool to allow you to hear the bass bart as clearly as possible. If you’re a vocalist looking to create a practice track you can upload an MP3 and get back just the backing track.
I tried it out with a couple of tracks. “Don’t Change Horses,” by Tower of Power, worked perfectly. I also tried it out with a recording I made about a hear ago, “Grandpa’s Spells,” to see how it would handle something that doesn’t have vocals. It didn’t work as well. The separated tracks were mostly silent and the instruments without vocals track sounded the same as the original track (this track, by the way, is a quartet of piano, bass, guitar, and trombone).
So the uses that you might get out of this app are limited to rock style tunes, at least for now. I hope that this app eventually adds the ability to separate other specific tracks in different genre’s of music. I’d like the ability to use it to separate an instrument solo track or just the horn section for transcription purposes, but for a free, web-based app it’s pretty cool.
Try it out here.
