I have been trying to find a tool that will separate the lead guitar track in instrumentals like stuff by The Shadows, Ventures, etc., and SpectraLayers was recommended.
So, I tried out the demo version. Unfortunately, it just came up with the same issue as others I’ve tried, and that is that it can’t separate a lead guitar track from the other guitars.
So, for example, if I do Unmix Song on a Shadows track, i.e. lead, rythym, bass guitars and drums, the lead is mixed with the rythym on the separation and only leaves the bass and drums when this is muted.
Now, it may be that there are better Unmix options than ‘Song’, but I couldn’t get any to work.
Any advice on this?
Unmix Song will get you the guitars, bass and drums on 3 separate tracks.
Then to dig deeper (where you want to separate the lead from the rythm guitar) you’ll have to start understanding the spectrogram and the selection tools.
Here’s the famous lead melody from The Shadows - Apache:
The lead melody can easily be seen in the spectrogram as horizontal lines. The rythm guitar is mostly vertical lines. Here I’m using the Harmonics selection tool to only select the lead melody:
And I’m cutting it to a separate layer:
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It’s really all down to spending serious time with the program & understanding what the displays actually mean. It’s taken me ages to get my head around it, and I had a small advantage in that I have been using RX Audio Editor since it’s inception too.
It’s a massively powerful tool - I love it & the more I learn the stronger the love grows too
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Can you specifically name the exact audio you want to unmix the lead guitars out of?
Can you post a link to the music/audio/recording.
Thanks guys. @Robin_Lobel, I don’t really understand what you posted, but thanks anyway.
It looks like I’d have to spend a considerable amount of time on this. Maybe this isn’t the simple tool I was looking for! 
I’m just looking for a tool that I can use occasionally to take the lead guitar out, so I can play along to the rest.
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This is genius.
Can someone please explain in more detail what is going on in @Robin_Lobel post? I can’t ‘easily see’ the lead guitar horizontal lines at all.
How is the selection made in image #2?
This is all just highlighting a 2 second section of the song?
Any help appreciated.
@imacken I did a quick audio/video recording of my lead guitar extraction here :
Just the first 2 notes of course, but so you get the idea !
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Thanks a lot for that. A lot clearer! I’ll investigate it a bit more later.
A question for you, would I need the Pro version to do what I want, or would Elements be sufficient?
If Pro, then I would have to pass as there is no way I could justify the purchase price.
Thanks again.
Elements can’t separate guitar from drums and from bass, and it doesn’t have the Frequency/Harmonics selection tool. You can still make your way around it to select the lead guitar, but that makes it harder.
Thanks Robin. Looks like I’ll have to give up on SpectraLayers then, but thanks for all your help.