How to Make a Karaoke Version of Any Song (Backing Track + Lyrics Video)

What you need

• The song as a file: MP3, WAV, FLAC, M4A, OGG, AAC or WebM. Use the studio version, not a live recording, for reasons that come up in step 1.
• A browser. Chrome or Edge on a laptop with a graphics card is fastest; Safari and Firefox work, slower.
• For the lyrics video, a free editor such as CapCut or Canva, or a slideshow app if you only need static pages.

Step 1: Make the backing track

1. Open the karaoke maker and drop the file in. The page downloads a separation model to your browser the first time (about 170 MB, cached afterwards) and runs it on your device; the song is not uploaded.
2. Wait for the separation. One to three minutes for a typical track on a GPU.
3. Download the karaoke track (everything except the voice). Download the isolated vocal too; you will want it in a moment.

The model removes every voice it finds, harmonies included. That is right for the lead, and sometimes wrong for the backing vocals a singer expects to hear under the chorus. The fix is easy: put the karaoke track and the vocal stem on two tracks in any editor, pull the vocal down by 15 to 20 dB, and export. You get a "guide vocal" version, which is what most commercial karaoke discs actually are. For a party, make both: the clean track for confident singers, the guide version for everyone else.

If the chorus comes back with a hole in it, the source was a live take: the crowd sang into the vocal mic and the separator treated the crowd as voice. The vocal remover page explains the other reasons a track does not come out clean; the short version is to start from the studio master and from a lossless file when you have one.

Step 2: Fix the key and the tempo

Most people cannot sing in the original singer's key, and a karaoke track in the wrong key is a bad night no matter how clean it is. Decide the key before you build the video, because the lyrics timing depends on the tempo. Any editor can transpose: Audacity has Change Pitch (keep "preserve tempo" on), every DAW has a transpose control, and many karaoke players do it on the fly. Stay within about three semitones in either direction; past that, pitch-shifting starts to sound artificial on the instruments, especially on the drums.

Tempo changes are safer than key changes for a separated track, because time-stretching a backing track without a vocal in it hides most of the artifacts. Slowing a fast song by five to eight percent is common for beginners and rarely audible.

Step 3: Add the lyrics

There are three ways, in increasing order of effort and quality.

1. Static pages. Paste the lyrics into a slideshow, one verse per slide, and advance them by hand. Zero timing work, fine for a living room.
2. Auto-captions on the original. Editors like CapCut generate captions from speech; they will find nothing in an instrumental, so run the auto-caption pass on the original song with the vocal in it, then swap the audio track for your karaoke file. The captions keep their timing because the two files are the same length, sample for sample.
3. Hand-timed word highlighting. A karaoke-style caption template in CapCut or a dedicated karaoke editor lets you tap each word on the beat. Slow, but it is what a real karaoke bar screen looks like.

If you transposed or time-stretched the backing track in step 2, do the same to the original before you run auto-captions on it, so the timing still matches.

Step 4: Export for where you'll sing

• TV over HDMI or AirPlay: MP4, 1080p, with the karaoke track as the audio. Keep a copy of the audio as a separate MP3 or WAV in case you switch to a phone speaker.
• Phone or tablet: the MP4 is fine, but turn the caption font size up before exporting; the default sizes are designed for a screen you sit far from.
• A karaoke machine that takes MP3+G or CDG: those formats need a dedicated authoring tool; the backing track you made is the audio half of it.

Karaoke maker or vocal remover?

Same separator, two pages. The karaoke maker is written for singers and defaults to the backing track. The vocal remover is written for producers and editors who want the voice gone for other reasons, and describes what to do when the instrumental needs cleaning. If you are making something to sing over, start here; if you are making something to sample or remix, start there.

A karaoke track of a commercial song for use at home is personal use. Performing it in a bar, streaming it, or selling it is a licensing matter for the rights holders; the tool does not change that.