KindaSorta OT: Bleeping using Audacity

Post your tips & tricks here for creating slide shows with ProShow Gold. This could include suggestions for style and content in addition to working with the software itself
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KindaSorta OT: Bleeping using Audacity

Postby 95delta98 » Tue Mar 25, 2008 5:37 pm

Like any good PSG user, I use the Audacity sound editor to work on sound files - usually truncating a song, but sometimes playing with the volumes and the like.

Any "tricks" to effectively bleep a bad word from a song?

I've tried selecting the bad word passage and just reversing the sound, and I've tried just snipping the passage from the song. Neither technique yielded a pleasant-sounding result.

Just wondering if anyone has experimented and found a nice approach through trial and error.

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Postby 95delta98 » Tue Mar 25, 2008 6:26 pm

Okay, darn, I'm answering my own question.

Looks like the "wah-wah" effect does the trick nicely - keeps the rhythm, but obscures the word. Peter Frampton would be proud.

If someone has a better idea, let me know.

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Postby Jerry Cole » Tue Mar 25, 2008 8:23 pm

95delta98,
It kinda a hard one to address without knowing the exact %#@(&* music that you are working with so I'm glad you found a "You" to answer your own query. I'm really curious of where you used the "wah wah".
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Postby 95delta98 » Wed Mar 26, 2008 3:56 am

Jerry Cole wrote:95delta98,
I'm really curious of where you used the "wah wah".
Jerry

Good question and I should have been more clear in my answer to my own post.

I isolated the bad word (as experienced Audacity users know, you can highlight a selection, zoom to just that selection, and then incrementally by trial and error, drag the start and end of the selection until you have perfectly isolated whatever it is you're chasing).

I then played around with most of the effects on the isolated word. Although there might have been better options available, after 20 minutes of playing around, I found the wah-wah sound did the job great. Maybe it was just the right thing for my situation, but it made the word indiscernible, yet kept the song's sound and rhythm intact. We're talking about a half-second of sound by the way.

This was by the way on the Matchbox 20 lyrics:

I sat down on the street, took a look at myself
said where you going man you know the world is headed for hell

and for a slide show being done for a Cub Scout banquet. Now obviously, the 20% of the people who know the song or are following the lyrics will know what's there, and maybe one or two of them might take offense if the word were left intact. But I managed to remove it so that it's not there to offend anyone who might take offense, and the moment just passes by unnoticeable by anyone who's not looking for the word.

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Postby BarbaraC » Wed Mar 26, 2008 8:17 am

Isn't "hell" a word used in the Bible? I always thought it was more how the word was used rather than that it was used at all. Of course, as a kid, the first time I acted all grown up and used the word, my mother's eyebrows shot up, but then she couldn't help it. She burst out laughing at such a large concept coming from such a small person. You can't train kids if you laugh at their offenses.

Barbara

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"Wah-Wah"

Postby Jerry Cole » Wed Mar 26, 2008 2:21 pm

I guess I'm headed straight to wah-wah. I bet those scouts can come up with stronger language. I thought that it was some multi-sylabled epithet that would fry the ears of s dock worker!
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Postby LEE7 » Wed Mar 26, 2008 2:28 pm

I`m disapointed, thought I was gonna learn a new word lol


Regards.


Peter

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Postby Jerry Cole » Wed Mar 26, 2008 2:32 pm

Peter,
Hey I got "wah-wah" down cold! :lol:
Jerry
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Postby BarbaraC » Wed Mar 26, 2008 3:53 pm

My eyes (ears?) were opened when my son came home from school and told me all of what he'd learned. I said he should never use words he couldn't define, so he set about learning those definitions, and I must now thank him for my wide vocabulary. But he never used the word, wah-wah. Perhaps it's ill-defined.

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Postby toad » Wed Mar 26, 2008 8:21 pm

I just have to say Matchbox 20 is my absolute favorite and that song is my ringtone. :D Too bad you have go to the trouble to alter a good song in fear of offending someone. I say if they play it that way on the radio it shouldn't be a problem. Just my 2 cents.

mspetter

Postby mspetter » Thu Mar 27, 2008 3:36 am

And I thought wah-wah was just a type of trumpet mute! :-)

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