Thread: Help with Singing Skeletons

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I'm having a little problem with making my skulls sing. I need to get them to sing without them opening their jaws to the background music. I have the servo and servo audio/driver from Scary Terry. I'd like to be able to get them to sing with the music in the background but have yet to figure it out.

Here's a video of something similar that I want to do.

Halloween Thrill 2008 - You Tube

I know I have to seperate out the voice from the backgroud somehow, but I have no idea how to do that. Help anyone?

Have you looked at Audacity yet, it's an audio editing program and it's free to download.

When I was working with my Boris skulls, I remember somebody bringing up the idea of creating an audio track with your music and vocals on one channel, and then creating another channel with a series of tones on it. You pipe the music channel to your speakers, and then you pipe the tones to your skulls to control the jaw movement. Trying to remove the vocals from a pre-recorded track seems like it might be a daunting task ?

I like that video...gives me an idea to have Michael Jackson's corpse singing in the yard, maybe have a bunch of empty prescription bottles laying all over. Ok, that was in bad taste. My apologies. But yes, to get back on topic having a seperate tone on the skull channel is the way to go. I used it on my groundbreaker.

Yes , that wasme , in a other lifespan - LOL
Anyway , there is no software that will allow you to seperate the voice from the music and leave the voice . The only way to get this done is as follows:

Get your copy of AUDACITY - its free.
Then use it to seperate the tracks to STERSO 2 channels and now , take ONE of the channels and wipe it clean of any sounds/music . Then use your mic and record a NEW track and after recording the new track , copy that track to the one you cleared, blanked out on the original song.
What your recording on that new track is YOU singing the words to the song you want the skeleton to sing. BUT... when you use it , you are ONLY using the track that has the original music on it and NOT your singing. The track that has your singing on it , goes ONLY to the input/mic part of your skelly and with NO speaker hooked to that output channel . THis way , the ONLY thing hearing your off key singing ( LOL - don't worry , we ALL have a bit of "off key" ) will be the intake section of the skelly. and your TOT'ers ( audience ) will only hear the original track of music . (btw - you can also copy the track your gonna wipe and paste it over the channel your gonna keep, that way , in case , theres some music or other sounds there , you won't miss them .
Or ... you could "tap" out the mouth movement using a program like AL or LOR or Vixen , or ?????

Check out this thread:

Driving an Audio Servo Driver with an Audio Sublayer

I think you will find it very informative.

Thanks for the help, guys! Very informative. I already have audicity on my comp, so no worries there. Plus, the info you guys gave me will help with some of the other stuff I want to do with the skellys.

Maybe you guys can help me with something else to... I have a script I want the skellys to perform without it sounding like my voice. Would audicity help me morph my voice or would I have to get another program to do that?

Yep ... AUDACITY can do that . its better to get the BETA version of AUDACITY . It has a LOT more options for alterations

Also , lksmart , what program/software are you using to set your servo(s) in action ?

As far as I know, I just need the servo/audio driver by Scary Terry, right? I have a servo and a driver for all 4 skellys, and my husband made the driver according to the schematics by Terry. Thank God for falling in love with a handyman!

Granted, I haven't put it all together yet (simply because I'm not entirely sure how as I am very mechanically disinclined), so I have no idea if it's going to work yet. I simply have all the parts and now I need to figure out how to put it together.

Btw Wonderboy, I followed your instructions for the audio, so that's good to go. Your instructions were very easy to follow and helped me out a LOT, so thanks.