DadCallingJingleBells1 0001

A holiday tribute to my late father. Dad always enjoyed calling square dances and over the holidays we would push all the furniture back after dinner and he would give us a dance lesson. Dad loved music and even after he had to give up square dancing he would play his keyboard for hours. We lost him three years ago after a long battle with Parkinson's disease and miss him a lot especially this time of year. So, when I stumbled across a slide of him from the 1970s in his square dance clothes calling a dance, I decided to try to give my family the gift of seeing him call one more time.

All I had was a still image but I knew I could animate his face and synchronize his mouth to an audio file of a square dance call using a product called CrazyTalk. I didn't have an audio file of his voice either so I used a product called MorphVOXPro to morph my own voice into something more male sounding. I must have recorded that audio track 20 times but I still couldn't make it sound right. (It's hard to carry a tune when your voice is being morphed in real time) I hope you'll forgive me for that Dad. I found a music loop of Jingle Bells on the web up at Soundsnap.com and was allowed to use up to five music loops per month as a member with a free account. So I joined this free spirited group and got the music I needed. Then I downloaded a free sound editing tool from Audacity.com to add a prelude to the song since it started right at the point Dad would need to start calling and I thought that was a little too abrupt. I tied everything together and sprinkled in a few transitions using Microsoft MovieMaker.

To my other family members - this is my attempt to give you a gift that can't be purchased in any store. I hope you enjoy the memories.

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People & Blogs

Tags:

• square dance
• Jingle Bells
• holiday
• tribute
• Dad
• father
• memories