After a lot of Googling, and many poor quality suggestions, guides and applications, I finally stumbled upon an easy and free method to strip vocals from a MP3 or other file using the program Audacity.

Here is a short YouTube video on the very quick process to remove the vocals using Audacity.

🎬 Video: Video

If you can view the video, here are the steps:

• Install Audacity, download for free for Mac or Windows from SourceForge.
• Open the file you wish to strip the vocals (File > Open).
• Where the song is loaded, you will see an “X”, file name (e.g. Test Song), triangle pointing down. Press the downwards triangle and select Split Stereo to Mono.

• Press the downwards triangle again and press Mono.
• Repeat Step 4 for the other channel (after stereo is split to mono, you will see there are two “X, Test Song, Down Trinagle”).
• Select the bottom channel, up at the top menu select Effect > Invert.
• Export the file to save in your desired format such as WAV or MP3 (File > Export).
• Enjoy your vocals free track.

There is some quality degradation when removing the vocals, and an original instrumental version would be preferred. But for many uses (such as a school assembly), this is very suitable.