Tips for figuring out lyrics? Equalizer settings, etc.

[wysiwyg]

Does anyone have general tips to figure out the lyrics of a track when no one has done it yet?

After I know the lyrics it seems easier to hear what is being said along with the music even if it isn't really any more intelligible than it was in the first place. :-)

Sometimes the lyrics just aren't published yet but the Lyrics Wikia is a good place to find lyrics without being ad-bombed like most of the sites you find just by searching. Mostly what you get are just add-filled Google magnets with either no lyrics or, at best, the same content.

[Drewthetexan]

if the lyrics are even intelligible, I'd think you'd want to filter out sounds outside the vocal range, and amplify sounds within the vocal range.

from http://www.kodachrome.org/salt/sunderst.htm:

Frequency Range of the Human Voice

Voice range covers 300 Hz to 3500 Hz


Most energy concentrated below 1000 Hz


Vowels have most of their energy below 1000 Hz


Vowels contain the "power and impact of the voice"


Consonants have most of their energy above 1000 Hz


Consonants are responsible for intelligibility


Harmonics in voice can go above 3500 Hz


Poor high frequency response reduces intelligibility

Obviously you need an equalizer that can target audio at or around these frequencies.

[wysiwyg]

Thanks for the suggestions. I just have the software equalizers but I suppose it'll be ok. It probably doesn't help having the voice intentionally distorted like much of this genre tends to do.

[Drewthetexan]

Thanks for the suggestions. I just have the software equalizers but I suppose it'll be ok. It probably doesn't help having the voice intentionally distorted like much of this genre tends to do.

It probably wouldn't be too hard (famous last words) to clean up the vocal distortion with some simple programs through matlab, or something like that. I've never looked at it, but human vocals would have distinct sound waves, and I'd guess that vocoders just add a higher frequency distortion to the sound wave. If you know, or can reasonably guess, what the distortion wave looks like, it is really easy to remove it. If you process the audio enough, I'd bet you could reasonably reconstruct the natural vocals alone.

I wonder if there is a market for that...

[wysiwyg]

I wonder if there is a market for that...

Law enforcement. CSI don't you know. :-)

[xeno]

I wonder if there is a market for that...

Law enforcement. CSI don't you know. :-)

To be honest, I don't think any easy filtering or "cleanup" of the vocals works much...
most attempts at cleanup just makes the vocals more human-like, but not clearer or
easier to understand...  if you can't identify the vocals unfiltered, then you probably
can't no matter what you do with it...

You can try to find live performances of the songs, but often they are harder to understand
than the original...

Also a tip is to try to understand the meaning of the lyrics, and then listen to the song
again with less focus on the exact sentences...

[wysiwyg]

I usually do that first thing. If you don't use any partial lyrics you know then a bunch of "lyrics" site results come up that just have a bunch of advertisements and a message saying they don't have the lyrics! Worthless Google-ad magnets. :-(
/rant

[creepster]

Actually, I don't have any idea bout that. But maybe you can type in a little of what you know and it will give you every song with those words in it. Hope this helps.

typing up lyrics wont help if they are sung in a foreign language
with german or french (for example) spelling is of an essence to even find the work in a dictionary
spanish might be a little *easier* being pronounced the way it is spelled

all the fancy equipment to clean out music from voice wont help you anyway when it comes to that
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