Removing Narration

Hi

Can anyone help me with this one. I have a short MP3 track which features an actor talking while some people are whistling a tune in the background. I want to remove the actor’s voice but leave the whistling, preferably enhanced. I have no experience of this kind of editing and I have spent nearly a week on this. I have tried some of the YouTube tutorials for removing vocals (using the split, invert and mono methods) but to no avail. I certainly lose the vocal but also the whistling. Is it actually possible to do what I want with Audacity and if so, can anyone please tell me how.

I am using Windows 7 and Audacity 2.1.2.

Most grateful for any help and advice.

G

What’s the aim, to produce a high quality audio recording of the whistled tune, or just to make the tune a bit easier to hear?

If you post a few seconds of the recording in WAV format, that will help us to advise how much improvement is possible. (See: https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/how-to-post-an-audio-sample/29851/1)

Hi Steve

Thanks for getting back to me. I’ve attached a few seconds of the track. I want to completely lose the the actors’ dialogue completely leaving only the whistling then, if possible, increase the volume/quality of it. In the background they are whistling KEEP THE HOME FIRES BURNING - unfortunately no-one appears ever to have recorded a ‘whistling’ version of this song and this is the nearest I could find for my project.

Many thanks

George

Hi Steve, apologies if my reply comes again, I had PC crash and I’m not sure if my message has gone or not.

In answer to your question - I want to lose the actors’ voice but keep (and hopefully) enhance the whisling. The tune being whistled in background is KEEP THE HOME FIRES BURNING - unfortunately there isn’t an recorded whisting version of the song which I need for my project and this was the best I could find.

I’ve attached a few seconds WAV file as requested.

Many thanks

George

You’re dead.

It may have two blue waves, but they’re identical. It’s two-track Mono. The vocal management tools don’t work on Mono.

If you play the piece, see that the bouncing green sound meters bounce exactly the same? Vocal Remover and Vocal Reducer only work if the two sound meters are different. There are some other rules, but that one’s a biggie.

Koz

Hi Koz

Thanks - although it wasn’t the answer I was hoping for. I’ll just have to look for another bit of whistling!!!

G

This is probably a daft question but I have an instrumental (violin & piano) version of Keep The Home Fires Burning. Are there any special effects (or plugins) that would make this sound like whistling?

Thanks

G

Not convincingly like humans whistling.

Regarding your original question:

The audio quality of the posted sample is pretty poor, but a reasonable amount of isolation is possible.
You’ve still not told us what this is for. Would the quality of this partially worked sample be good enough:

Hi Steve

As project for myself, and being a huge Beatles fan and completist, I have been trying to put together An Original Soundtrack for the John Lennon film, How I Won The War. A soundtrack was never released but I was able to find a list of the music used in the film from the IMDb site. I have managed to extract all of the music from the DVD with the exception of the background whistling of Keep The Home Fires Burning. In this scene,actors Michael Crawford and Michael Horden have a conversation while the troops whistle Keep The Home Fires Burning in the background. Initially I had hope to extract the whistling then increase its volume and add it as a seperate track to actors voices which would fade out leaving the whistling.

The quality doesn’t need to excellent, just good enough to stand on its own. Your sample is fairly close to the mark but I would need the whistling to be more obvious. I have an instrumental copy of the song with violin and piano which I could use, but then it wouldn’t be faithul to the project.

Thanks

G

I suspect that won’t be possible from the sample that you posted. Parts of the whistling are totally obscured by the narration, such as the first part of the clip.

The obvious solution is to find one or more people that can whistle, and record them. To create the effect of lots of people whistling, you can “overdub” (see: Tutorial - Recording Multi-track Overdubs - Audacity Manual)

Thanks Steve - I feared I may be on to a loser with this one but I’m grateful for the help offered.

G

a reasonable amount of isolation is possible.

How?

Koz

Whistling is mostly narrow band noise, and so can be removed quite effectively using the Spectral Edit Multi-tool to notch filter out the whistling.
Before doing that, make a duplicate copy of the track and invert it.
After filtering out the whistling from the original track, mix it with the inverted copy (Tracks > Mix and Render). That will “cancel out” the parts that are “not whistling”.

Thanks Steve and Koz for your help with my project.

I’ve decided to use an original recording of Keep The Home Fires Burning. This isn’t in the move but, what the hell, no-one’s going to hear it but me.

G