Sound for a ventriloquist act, run without being seen to run it

You cannot look, and you cannot reach

Every other act on this site can steal a glance at a screen. You cannot: the moment your eyes go to a laptop, the person the audience has been watching stops being a second person and becomes a puppet on your arm. The whole act is an agreement not to notice you, and operating a computer in front of them breaks it more thoroughly than a bad line does. So the sound has to be fired by something that does not look like operating anything — a foot pedal under the stool, or a button in the palm that never leaves it.

A pedal is a keyboard, and that is why this works

A USB or Bluetooth foot pedal presents itself to the computer as a keyboard sending one or two key codes. This has a Learn mode: press the pedal, and whatever it sends is bound to whatever you choose — play, stop, next, a specific pad. Nothing has to be a supported device, because there is no device list. If it sends a key when you press it, it can drive the act.

The figure’s own sounds have to land on the syllable

A gag where the figure sneezes, or a radio in its head plays two bars, is a timing gag. Late is not funny. Sounds under a minute are decoded into memory when the show loads rather than read from disk on the press, so the first press is sample-accurate — the sound and the press are the same moment, not nearly. Set them to overlay and the music underneath ducks and comes back on its own.

Nothing on screen for anyone to read

The computer is often in the wings or on a table in view. It shows a list and a countdown, and nothing else — no browser, no library, no store, no notifications, because it makes no network calls at all. Turn the theme dark and the row size up and it is a black screen with one glowing line on it, readable by you at eight feet and meaningless to anyone in row three.

Can I run the whole act from a foot pedal?

Yes, and a single-switch pedal is enough if the act is linear — bind it to play, and each press starts the next thing in order. A two- or three-switch pedal lets you add stop and a couple of pads.

Will a sound effect stop the music underneath?

Only if you tell it to. An overlay pad plays on top and dips the music while it sounds. An interrupt pad stops the music and takes over. That is a setting per pad, so the sneeze and the blackout can behave differently.

Does anything appear on screen that would give the game away?

It is a list of names and a countdown. There is no advertising, no library, no account, and no network connection of any kind, so nothing can pop up while you are working.