I met Jim at a fish fry here in Texas. I saw him with a tray in one hand, a single crutch, a missing leg and trying to get his meal to a table. Of course I got him settled and as I was about to leave he said " I would appreciate a little company if you don’t mind. You see this is my big night out. My wife drops me off and I stay for a couple hours" Well come to find out he has so many interests that parallel mine including playin guitar all his life. The second time we met, he brought some elephant garlic and a cd of his tunes that he recorded. They are precious to say the least. He said he recorded them in the last couple of years. I asked if he had separate tracks and he just frowned. He said I just played and sang. Anyhow, he is just the coolest guy I have ever met. I told him initially that maybe I could “enhance” them a bit and he seemed excited about the whole thing. I know I could put a bass track down and maybe drum along with the track, but I am not sure how to isolate the vox and the acoustic (if that is even possible). Your hints on what be greatly appreciated. One of the songs is called I just come to get my baby out of jail. ha ha This one is red river valley. Hope I am still playin at 82?
ok,its all i can do in 10 mins…
you (that means ANYBODY on here) have to fixy the backing band. Dont try to isolate it, just play along with it in stereo. And I will mixit.
Hi Vaughan I can never figure out what folks are talking about. I guess what you are saying is to forget about the acoustic he is playing and just play my own tracks left and right. He is singing in key which is remarkable. I will be home to my regular studio in a couple weeks. Can’t wait 
It sounded like there weren’t many lows in that track. Your ten minute touch has already made it come alive. I hope I can pull this off. Thanks much
that is a great story. i look forward to seeing where this goes.
yes, just throw the guitar / vox I JUST DID for you, into a stereo track, then build your music around THAT and send me ONLY the other stuff I haven’t heard yet - I don’t need what I already did to the vocal/guitar mixed into the backing track. I will make it all match up, don’t worry.
Your friend has a lot of charm and character Mr. F. I don’t know of any way to separate his guitar and voice but maybe you don’t need to. You can just add whatever you want, but to my ear your voice and his should harmonize well and then maybe just your acoustic guitar, maybe with the ‘Nashville tuning’ , I think you call it, up above his should be all you need IMHO.
Ok, after I figure out how to throw it into a stereo track. ha ha I just usually play a different guitar on either side. I have on a couple occasions copied the first track, delayed it slightly, and put it on the other side. I’ll figure that stereo thing for studio one out on youtube.
Hi Mr Lee This old dude is all class. You can tell most of his friends are gone and he certainly can’t get around very well. I hope to be able to stay linked to him when I leave Texas. He is pretty good with the puter. I thought he said he did this in audacity or something like that. I hear what you mean about leaving his stuff alone and play on top of it. I was looking at the frequencies of the male vocal vs the acoustic, and it ain’t good trying to mess there. I did think that I read that melodyne can do that, but I think I only have version two? Going to be fun trying to make someone’s life a little better.
Im talking copy and paste here… just stick that (what i did to it) into a new project in your DAW, somehow
Paul, what a great story. I sure hope you are able to stay connected with him too. The guys are on to something here. What “vtr” is saying is to use the track he posted where he brought out the vocals, then play and sing along with that. (You can right-click and download his file.) Regardless of how you get there, I’m looking forward to hearing the results! This world needs more people like you. 
Hi Mike You know me well and realized you have to break down all what is said to a simple form. It works:) As I progress with this, I am hoping others might jump in and add tracks. Maybe strings or a steel guitar etc. Thanks for your kind words bud
Great story, and it is always great to make New friends. Maybe you can find a mandolin player on here and add a midi fiddle part. The acoustic guitar straight up the middle is fine, vtr did a nice job, so you can layer in some fingerpicked acoustic in an open D tuning, or even some slide/dobro accompaniment to widen it out. Take the folks down home a little.
Hi Bob The open D accents is a great idea. I went to see Jim today and found out he also has some very nice guitars. He asked if I wanted any of them and I lied and said no. ha ha Good to hear from you. Take care
Yes, just use my track as a guide, and build on it, as @miked said. I will happily re-mix the final thing back as required…
this whole community thing is awesome , btw
Here’s a quick shot at some noise reduction on that file. I just used reafir, which is pretty primitive, so if anybody else has a been noise reduction plugin, they can probably get much better results. I wouldn’t suggest using this particular one, but I figured if I posted a poorly done noise reduction, someone might jump in and do a better one.
But as others have said, there’s no reason to bother separating the vocals and the guitar. If you have instruments you want to add, then just add them to the existing recording. If you just want to clean it up, there are lots of things you can do there as well.
Hi Boz I heard all the noise the first time and thought that it might be here to stay. I have no idea how you did that, but it sure did clean it up big time. All I can do is use EQ, so whatever that “primitive” tool you used, I think I want one. I have many recordings with noise like that. I wonder if I can use it in studio one. I will have to look. Thanks you for your efforts and taking an interest to help this ole guy. I’m not much into old country, so I will be looking for some help also with some guitar tracks as well. I will try? ha ha
They say Audacity does but Studio 1 doesn’t have noise reduction (from what I read ) Audacity is a free DAW that is easy to use.
I have actually had very good results with it. As long as there’s a consistent background noise and enough ‘room tone’ to grab a noise profile sample, I think it does a great job.
Audacity has one of their LADSPA plugins that does noise reduction, and I haven’t used it since I upgraded my version recently, but in the past it was pretty crappy. It would work, but any real degree of NR and there would be obvious artifacts so I found it fairly unusable. ReaFIR is the way to go IMO.
Here’s a go at it with Band-in-a-Box 2019.
I could do it better when I got more familiar with the program, but this is it for now. The toughest part was handling the timing changes, so I took creative license on the solution(s).
Hi James. I hope you had fun with this:) That is the sound that is what I would call a typical match for this. Now the trick will be to get it to sit in the mix accurately. I will have to listen a few more times to be more specific I know this took some time and I appreciate it. At least the chord pattern wasn’t tricky. ha ha