I have heard a rumour that there is a piece of software that can break
musical songs down to there seperate tracks i.e the guitar part or the
bassline or vocals or the drum part,As I have said it is only a
rumour,but I would appreciate it if someone could investigate this
further for me and find out the name of it if it exists and where I
can get it from.I would need it to run on an applemac g3 with
operating system 9.2

                            many thanks

If you think about how the data is stored, ie not in seperate tracks,
then there is no perfect way to do this. The best you will get is the
ability to "kind of" pick out certain tracks... not sure what software
you will need but it won't be perfect.

you need to take advantage of the different attribute of the various
sounds that make up a track. bass guitares produce a much deeper sound
that a singer. to seperate these sounds you need to use a graphical
equalizer. you've probably heard of this before, but to clarify, a
graphical equalizer adjusts the volume of a select range of pitches.
you can use this to mute unwanted frequencies, and therefore unwanted
instruments.

there are many good graphical equalizers available for free on the pc.
here some links to get you going:

http://classic.winamp.com/plugins/browse.jhtml - these are plug-ins
for winamp 2.x (still the best version). if you're using winamp, you
can output to file instead of to the sound card (ie, you can make a
copy of your efforts). to do this, go to options>preferences>output
and select the disk writer.

http://downloads.zdnet.co.uk/downloads/search/1001-0-0.html?lastos=windows&q=graphical+equalizer&os=windows&cat=2025&x=10&y=9
- some stand alone programs on zdnet. notice some of them are free,
and some are trial versions. there will probably be a free one that
will surfice.

interesting fact: the ill-fated sega saturn had a cd audio player
built in to it with a 'karaoke mode'. this was basicly a pre-set
graphical equalizer that was desgnied to cut out pitches associated
with singing.

using a graphical rqualizer is a bit of an art. it takes a bit of
practise, and is rarely perfect. look for one that can completely mute
the output, and has loads of frequencies to choose from.

good luck.