USING AUDACITY: ROBUST, FREE, AND FULL- FEATURED SOFTWARE

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Jesse Wright
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Slide 1 USING AUDACITY: ROBUST, FREE, AND FULL- FEATURED SOFTWARE This presentation contains audio; ensure your speakers are turned up. Click the forward arrow below to proceed to the next slide.

1 Slide 1 USING AUDACITY: ROBUST, FREE, AND FULL- FEATURED SOFTWARE This presentation contains audio; ensure your speakers are turned up. Click the forward arrow below to proceed to the next slide. Audacity is a free, full-featured desktop audio recording and editing tool. It can seem complicated, but if you want to take your audio to the next level, you need to consider a tool like audacity. This presentation contains audio; ensure your speakers are turned up. Click the forward arrow below to proceed to the next slide.

this presentation, we will cover, getting and installing Audacity,

2 Slide 2 WE WILL COVER: Getting and installing Audacity Recording Saving as an MP3 file Simple Editing Importing audio Creating fades In this presentation, we will cover, getting and installing Audacity, recording, saving as an MP3, simple editing, importing audio and creating fades.

3 Slide 3 VIDEO TUTORIAL INDEX: Getting Audacity Recording, saving, and exporting Simple Editing Time Shift Tool External Audio Envelope Tool This presentation covers a lot of ground. You can click on the videos in order, or you can pick and choose what you need to focus on. Use the return button when you are done watching the video to get back to this page.

4 Slide 4 GETTING AUDACITY Return to Index Page For this demonstration, we will be working on the Windows version of Audacity. There is also a Mac version of the tool which is very similar in most respects. First, in a browser go to: Click enter. Scroll down and find a yellow box with a couple different versions of the software. I suggest using the stable version and not the beta version unless you are using Windows 7. At the current time, Windows 7 needs the beta version. Click download Audacity. And next you will go down this page and click on the Audacity Installer. This will bring up a security warning. You can run or save this. And you ll run it. And then you will follow the instructions to install it on your computer. Next, you ll want to make sure you get the Lame Encoder. This is the piece of software that allows you to create mp3 files the preferred file format for audio on the web. So let s find that. Scroll down a little bit. Click Lame MP3 Encoder.

5 This will send you to a new page. You have some directions you can follow here. When you are ready, you can go to LAME Download Page. It s a little confusing. But you can go down here. This is free software, but they do ask for a donation. But I go to the link for Windows.exe and click that. You get a security warning. Click run. And then you ll run and follow the directions on your computer.

6 Slide 5 RECORDING, SAVING, AND EXPORTING Return to Index Page Let s open Audacity. This is your Audacity area. The gray box in the middle is where your tracks will be visualized. At the top are VCR-type controls for playback and recording. At the top left-hand corner is a pallet of tools used for editing. Make sure you have your headset microphone on and positioned correctly. You with click on the Red Button on the VCR-type controls at the top of the workspace. You will see then see a new track appear and if you should see a visual representation of your voice. It is the blue pattern and is called the waveform. When you are done recording click the button with the orange square to end recording. Let s try it. Hello world! This is my first recording in Audacity. You can click the green Play Button to listen to what you have recorded. Saving a Project.

7 Now let s save this project. Saving a Project will keep all you tracks (assuming you will have multiple tracks) intact. The Audacity project file extension is.aup. As you get more complicated files that you may want to return to it and edit or use a template, it will become imperative to save your projects often. In this scenario, we have three tracks and I want to save this as a.aup file. Now let s export the file as an MP3. So I will go up to the file menu. I will go to save project. And I will name this project. And we ll save it (as savingprojects.aup) on the desktop. You will see now that I have a.aup file called savingprojects.aup. It has a different icon then the Audacity program file. And a folder which holds all the constituent parts that are needed for the project. If we open up the savingprojects.aup file, we will see all the tracks are intact. And I can continue editing right from where I left off. EXPORTING TO MP3 Now let s export this file as an mp3. Remember mp3 is the preferred file format for audio on the Internet. This process is often called mixing down the production. What will happen is the various tracks will be condensed into a single track. And the overall production will be encoded in the mp3 format which makes a small file size. This is important for ease of delivery over the Internet. But on the other hand, once you mix down production it becomes harder to edit. Additionally, if this is the first time you are saving an mp3 file, you will be asked to associate the Lame Encoder you downloaded in the other tutorial into the exporting process. Let s try it. Let s click on file and go to Export as MP3. Notice that you get a warning that your recording will be mixed down. Hit OK. Let s save this as savingprojects.mp3. Now here is in the process where you have to associate the LAME MP3 Encoder. Let s click yes. Now we have to find this file. This file will be where you saved it to your hard drive in the process in the other tutorial. In this case, I know I saved it under My Computer, under Programs and under Lame for Windows. Let s find it now. And there it is. Click on the file, and click open. Now LAME is installed. You will only need to do that one time.

8 Now here you have options to put a title, artist, album etc., connected to your mp3 file. This is important if people are going to be playing this on an itunes environment or on an mp3 player. You can leave it blank, which we will do in this case. Hit OK. With bigger files it will take a few minutes to mix down the project. This one was small and happened immediately. So let s go to our hard drive. And as we can see we have an mp3 file. If I play it is going to play in the application associated with mp3 on your computer. That may be the built-in Windows program or it may be itunes. It really depends on your system. Let s click this. And there we have a mixed down mp3.

Slide 6 SIMPLE EDITING Return to Index Page Now let s focus on simple editing. In this scenario, we will record our voice, make a mistake, and edit out that mistake. Let s get started.

9 Slide 6 SIMPLE EDITING Return to Index Page Now let s focus on simple editing. In this scenario, we will record our voice, make a mistake, and edit out that mistake. Let s get started. {recording with a burp} Hello world. This is my second Audacity recording. Buurrrrrppppp! We don t want that unfortunate noise. You can see where it is on the waveform. Or if you need to, you can play back the track and listen for the problem. Next you will make sure the Selection Tool is selected in your tool palette. Sometimes it is known as the as the I-Bar tool. Next bring your cursor to where you want to start the edit. Hold down the mouse button., and then drag it to where you want the endpoint to be. Then cut the selection. And it is gone. To continue recording, hit the red record button and a new track will start where your cursor is. And here is the second part.

10 Slide 7 TIME SHIFT TOOL Return to Index Page Sometimes you might want to want to shift parts of your recording around. In that case you will use the Time Shift Tool. It is the one with the line with the two arrows on each end. In this scenario, I have two tracks. But, I want to move Track 2, to the front so it will play first. Let s listen. This is my third recording in Audacity. Hello world. Let s get started. First select the Time Shift Tool, hover over the track you want to move, hold down the left mouse button and drag the sound where you want it to go. Then adjust the others accordingly. Let s play it back. Hello world. This is my third recording in Audacity.

11 Slide 8 EXTERNAL AUDIO Return to Index Page IMPORTING AUDIO If you have music that you have the rights to use, you can import it into your project. Let s try it. Click Project. Click Import Audio. Find the mp3 file that you want. Open. Now the music layered as a new track in your Audacity project. You can use the Time Shift tool to move things around. CREATING A FADE In this scenario, we have two tracks. The bottom track is a music clip and the top track is talking. What I want to do is create a 15 second music intro to this audio presentation. So let s get started.

12 The first thing I need to do is clip the music down to 15 seconds. I will use the selection tool to do so. Let s try it. I will hold down the mouse button and drag along the clip that I don t want. Then I will get rid of it. Let s use the Time Shift tool to generally get things lined up here. Now we are going to create a fade in the musical clip. Let s use the Selection tool to select a portion of the musical clip. Go to the Effect menu. And chose Fade Out. And you ll see that the music fades out in the waveform. Now lets have the music fade out while the talking begins. So they need to overlap. So we will use our Time Shift tool, and put the talking right about there. Now let s listen to it. {Music fades out.} Hello world. This is my fourth Audacity clip.

13 Slide 9 ENVELOPE TOOL Return to Index Page In this scenario, we will use the Envelop Tool to create a musical intro and quiet background music for the spoken word. The top track is the spoken word and the bottom track is the music. Select the Envelop Tool from your tool pallet. You will notice a subtle chance to the tracks. There is a blue line on the top and the bottom. When you hover over the top line, you will see two triangles show up. If you click down on your mouse button, you can make the entire track quieter. Or you can make it louder. When you release you will have an anchor point created. So then you can create another one. And then manually creating a fade. You are going to want to make it very quiet. It takes a little playing around to get it right. Now let s use our Time Shift tool to get the spoken word in the right place. Then let s use our Envelope tool at the end to set an anchor point. Now let s set another one. Bring it up here to make it louder. And let s play it. {Music fades.} Hello world. This is my fifth Audacity recording and it is going to be a little longer {Quiet music plays in the background} {More talking then musical outro gets louder.}

14 And there you have a musical background. Use this technique sparingly. You don t want to distract your listeners.

15 Slide 10 THANK YOU! Audacity is not a simple program, but it is very powerful. The simple procedures in this presentation will take you a long way and will be the foundation of your success with Audacity.

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