For aspiring vocalists & hobbyists who are looking for an easy to use file that is pre-mixed, balanced, and ready for vocals – THIS IS YOUR DOWNLOAD. With this file you can avoid messing around with individual stems and the need to adjust levels on multiple tracks by dragging this into your DAW, arming a track for your vocals, setting your recording levels, and hitting record.
This is a fully mixed, wet (meaning with Fx like EQ and reverb etc) instrumental stereo 24 bit .wav file of The Original Stairway Project with the project vocals removed. There is enormous headroom available here for you to add gain as you see fit (gain essentially means volume – sort of).
Here is an MP3 version of the file for preview:
What you don’t get when using a file like this is the ability to go into the individual tracks themselves and adjust for levels or carve out frequencies to make room for your voice. You can still do this in limited fashion on this track by using some parallel compression/EQ processing, but you’ll have less flexibility and be limited to working more with your vocals to make them fit. Engage with others in The Stairway Project Forums as they fill up and ask for assistance on the hows and whys of this.
DOWNLOAD THIS READY FOR VOCALS TRACK HERE:
If you feel the need to have more control consider downloading the Wet Stems (where you still have access to most the individual tracks) to manipulate and use instead. You might find that you’ve outgrown this mix and want to have more control over the track balance; that’s when you go to the stems. You can apply EQ and control gain on the individual wet stems with much greater flexibility but the FX (things like reverb and delay etc) are locked in. Beyond the wet stems you can consider downloading the Dry Stems and start from scratch building the track (when they are available for download).
Above all else – enjoy using the tracks and recording or performing your own version of Stairway to Heaven. You can use these as a sing-a-long backing track though you might want to add gain to them for that purpose. A fully mixed and mastered backing track will be made available at some point for those that want to have a ready-made backing track (with or without guitar solo) to use in performances and you are always welcome to make and post your own mixes from the stems (do this in the web forum)..
If you have any questions please feel free to ask here in the comments or in the project forums.
Note that all files available for download at this time are also listed here on our Files Page.
Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.
Feature Image Credit: Microphone by Grant by CC BY 2.0
