Isolate Tap Dance

Question

I have an audio file (.wav) of a tap dance and I would like to isolate the tapping and remove the music. Any suggestions?

SteveG_AudioMasters_ · Accepted Answer

I've just listened to the track. It's mono, for a start, and this tap dancing sounds more like clog dancing. And it's clipped quite badly, with music pretty faintly in the background. I'd rate your chances of doing anything with this at all at zero. Let me show you why; this is the spectrogram of part of your file:

Ringed in blue is a 'tap' (!). It's full spectrum, and this is what you want to keep. As part of the spectrum, the bits I've ringed in green are all that's distinguishable as potentially music. If you remove that part of the spectrun, you are also going to lose part of the 'tap', so it will show. What's worse is that short of painting every bit of this out by hand, there's no automated process on the planet that will be able to distinguish the music from the full spectrum disturbances in it.

If these had been properly recorded taps, then there might have been some sort of chance of doing something with it - possibly. But I'm sorry - starting from there, there's really no chance.

Richard M Knight · Answer

If the taps are in the middle of a stereo track you could try the 'central channel extractor'. You could also eq to remove the bass, there's not much LF in a tap! Also a carefully set up noise gate, using the tap frequencies as the key. There might also be ways using some of the noise reduction / restoration effects but I not an expert on these.

I once overdubbed a tap sequence for a TV show with the choreographer slapping his bare legs with his hands, worked supprisingly well......

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