Personally, I wouldn\'t try removing the vocals from a finished song. Many times, this is attempted by removing/reducing the frequencies of the singer\'s voice from the mix. Even the top end stuff can\'t remove it totally from a finished mix. Sometimes you can make do with this if the singer\'s voice doesn\'t blend into the background music well, but if this is piano music, forget about it. It\'s going to sound awful trying to remove a voice from it because it\'ll also snag a lot of other stuff in the process. Nevermind the fact that most Top 40 songs have usually been hit with a compressor pretty heavily to boot, making it that much harder to single out.
It\'s possible there\'s some amazing piece of hardware I don\'t know about that will do it well, but as far as I know the only reliable, quality way to do this is to remix the masters. I\'m thinking that\'s not an option in this case.
Honestly, since you own the CD already, I\'d suggest downloading the mp3, use it for practice and the competition, then delete it when you\'re done. I really rather hate suggesting this as a musician, but given the time frame, you might not even get the karoake version in time if you ordered it.
If possible, though, I\'d try to find a karaoke place and buy the CD. If an mp3 version is available online, then almost certainly it was ripped from the CD. Only bad thing is that karoake CDs tend to be $25+. Heh.
Good luck, Becca!
Kep
