Bass Remover

How to remove the bass from a song

1. Upload the song. MP3, WAV, M4A or FLAC, up to 10 minutes. The first time, you sign in with Google.
2. Press Remove the bass. The button shows the price before it starts: 1 credit for every minute of the song. A new account has 5 credits, enough for one song up to 5 minutes. Expect 1 to 3 minutes of processing.
3. Listen and download. Two reels appear: Without the bass and Bass only. Click a reel to hear only that file, and use the small waveform beside it to see where it plays. Each file downloads as an MP3 at 320 kbps.

A failed job gives your credits back.

What you get

• Without the bass. The full band with the bass line taken out: drums, guitars, keys, vocals.
• Bass only. Just the bass, whether it is a bass guitar, an upright or a synth line.

Play along as the bassist

Without the bass is a backing track made for one person. Play the bass part yourself with the drummer and guitarist already in place, and you will notice at once how closely your notes need to lock to the kick drum. That is hard to learn from a plain song, because the original bass fills the same low range you are trying to play in.

Some tips for practice:

• Learn the part first. Play Bass only on a loop, sixteen bars at a time, until your hands know it.
• Then drop it. Switch to Without the bass and play the same section from memory.
• Check the feel. Bass players often sit slightly behind or ahead of the beat. Listen to the isolated bass, and notice where the notes fall against the drums when you switch back.
• Slow it down. Use your player's speed control on the Bass only file for fast runs.

Work out a bass line

Low notes are hard to hear on laptop speakers and in a dense mix, and that is the main reason people look for a bass isolator. In the Bass only file, the guitar and keys are mostly gone, so each note is easier to follow. You can then write the notes down, or let software do the first pass: drop the Bass only file into Audio to MIDI, choose Bass, and download a .mid file for your DAW. The conversion runs in your browser. Check the result against the audio, because very low notes and slides are the first things it can get wrong.

Remix and production uses

• Replace the bass. Remove it, then write your own line or play a synth over the original track.
• Re-pitch for a mashup. With the bass separate, you can shift a track to a new key and keep the low end from clashing with another song.
• Clean up a muddy mix. Listening to the song without the bass shows how much of the low end is coming from the bass and how much from the kick drum.

Which songs work best

• A bass guitar playing clear notes over a normal band gives the best result.
• 808s and synth bass usually count as bass too, but they overlap with the kick drum. Listen to both files and check where each one ended up.
• A kick drum and bass playing the same note can bleed into each other, so a little kick may show up in Bass only, and some bass may stay in Without the bass.
• Old or mono recordings with a thick low end are harder to pull apart.
• Live recordings leave some leftovers, as with every instrument.

The model is good, but a bass line that is mixed very tightly with the kick will not come out perfectly. If you need the kick cleanly out of the way as well, the Drum Remover can help.

More instruments

For the whole band in separate files from one upload, use the stem splitter. Guitarists can try the Guitar Remover.