AUDACITY DIGITAL AUDIO SOFTWARE

Transcription

1 AUDACITY DIGITAL AUDIO SOFTWARE TABLE OF CONTENTS (Select a link below to jump to that section of the document) Importing Music Into Audacity... 2 Where To Get Sound Files... 2 Change The Volume of Sound Playback... 3 Working With Multiple Layers Of Sound... 4 Editing Sound... 5 Cutting & Copying... 5 Repositioning Sound... 6 Special Effects... 6 Recording Sound... 7 Exporting As A Wav or MP DOWNLOAD THIS FREEWARE FROM:

2 IMPORTING MUSIC INTO AUDACITY When you first open Audacity you will have an interface with a blank work area, thus you will need to import a sound file with which to work. To do this you must select the Project menu Import Audio. Importing Audio Blank Audacity work area. Audacity will accept many different types of audio files but the two you will most frequently work with are.wav and.mp3. The imported sound file will display as a Track in the work area. You can listen to the track using the playback controls. The timeline shows you how long the track is. WHERE TO GET SOUND FILES There are many different sources of sound files, but for your school projects you should download.mp3 clips from the website This is a website that makes samples of their music catalog available for educational purposes.

3 CHANGE THE VOLUME OF SOUND PLAYBACK There are times when you will want to playback certain sections of an audio clip louder than the rest of the clip. Likewise you may want other sections of the clip to playback more quietly. Audacity allows you to select sections of a track, and then adjust that sections playback volume by using the envelope tool, as shown below. Step #1: Placeing volume edit nodes. Choose the Envelope Tool Click with your mouse to place edit nodes along the section of the audio clip you want to adjust. Step #2: Stretch the edit nodes up or down to increase or decrease the volume.

4 WORKING WITH MULTIPLE LAYERS OF SOUND You can have overlapping audio tracks in an Audacity project, much the same way that you can having multiple image layers in an Adobe Photoshop picture. All you have to do is either import additional audio files (as previously discussed), or record a new audio track with a microphone (discussed in the final section). When you choose the Play button, both tracks will playback at the same time, unless you Mute a specific track. A muted track will be grayed out. It is always a good practice to give each track its own Name. It is not uncommon to have 10 or more tracks when working on a large audio project. Naming each track will keep the project organized and will make it much easier to know which sound clip you are editing. Click on the track s Audio Track dropdown menu & choose Name. Give the track a descriptive name in the dialog that appears.

5 EDITING SOUND If you have a sound clip that has too much dead air you will want to cut it out. Likewise you may like part of the sound clip and want to copy it to another track. Cutting & Copying Step #1: Selecting a section of the audio clip Choose the Selection tool. Then click and drag your mouse along the section of the clip you would like to cut or copy. Press Ctrl + X or Ctrl + C to cut or copy respectively. Step #2: Paste the selected portion of sound clip to a new track. Choose Project New Audio Track then select the new track and press Ctrl + V to paste.

6 Repositioning Sound It is often necessary to reposition a sound clip to along the projects time line. For example, maybe you would like the sound of a dog barking to start 3 seconds into the projects playback. To do this you select the Time Shift Tool and then drag the tracks audio to the desired position. SPECIAL EFFECTS You can apply many different types of special effects to a section of a track that has been selected with the selection tool. These effects are a lot of fun, so spend some time playing around and exploring them. WARNING! BEFORE applying any special effects make sure to SAVE your Audacity file. Audacity is an open source program, which means that anyone can download the program and edit its source code. Many of the special effects have been coded but not properly tested and as such the special effects contain bugs which will often crash Audacity.

7 By: Andrew Kiceniuk RECORDING SOUND Step#1 To record sound you will need to connect the microphone headset to the computers microphone jack. Please connect them as shown in the pictures below (Green in green, red in red.). Step #2 You will need to ensure that you have set Audacity s input to microphone, and have turned up the recording volume. Finally make sure all other audio tracks have been muted. Step #3 Give a commanding vocal performance into the microphone after you have pressed the record button. EXPORTING AS A WAV OR MP3 From the menu bar select File Export As Wav or File Have Fun! Export As MP3.