Audacity Demo and Tutorial

 

To start from scratch just follow the directions below or you can jump tutorials for specific tasks by selecting from the following links:

 

 

The Software:

Audacity 1.2.3 is Freeware!  It can be downloaded from http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

If you want to be able to save your finished Audacity audio projects in mp3 format instead of .wav format, you will need to download and install the free Lame MP3 Encoder.  The link is on the same website listed above or you can go directly to: http://mitiok.free.fr/ to get the it.

 

Demo Materials Download Instructions:

  1. Create a folder and name it “audacity demo”
  2. Download each of the following by right clicking on each link, then choosing “Save Link As”. 
  3. Navigate to the folder you created and click Save.

 

Narrator1.wav

Narrator2.wav

Narrator3.wav

Interview1.wav

Interview2.wav

Deemdanna_short.mp3 (Music Bed)

 

Project Instructions:

 

DOWNLOAD THE FILES YOU NEED FOR THIS PROJECT:

1.      Create a folder on your external media.  Name it audacity_demo

2.      Download all of the files listed above into the folder by right clicking on each file then choosing Save link as.  Save them into the audacity_demo folder.

3.      Use the same method described above to download other audio from web sources.  

Keep in mind that this method ONLY WORKS FOR .WAV OR .MP3 FORMAT AUDIO.  TO GET REAL MEDIA FORMAT OR AUDIO FROM WINDOWS MEDIA FILES YOU HAVE TO PLAY IT ON YOUR COMPUTER USING REAL PLAYER OR WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER AND RECORD IT USING AUDACITY AS IT PLAYS.  FOR INSTRUCTIONS CLICK HERE.

 

IMPORTING SOUND FILES INTO AUDACITY:

1.      Open Audacity

2.      Select Project>Import Audio

3.      Select all of the .wav files:

a.       interview1.wav

b.      interview2.wav

c.       narrator1.wav

d.      narrator2.wav

e.       narrator3.wav

Do NOT import the Deemdanna_short.mp3 yet.  It will confuse matters so we’ll deal with that later.

Hint:  You can “drag” a box over all of the .wave files or hold down the CTRL key and left click to choose each file.

f.        Click Open.  All of the .wav files will open into the Audacity Editing Window.

 

SAVING THE AUDICITY “PROJECT”:

1.      You should save your Audacity Project now.  

2.      Choose File > Save Project As

3.      Give it a name

 

Note:  Saving the Project is different from Exporting to WAV or MP3.  

·        When you save the Project, you’re saving all of the things you’ve done so that you can stop editing, then reopen the project and continue editing from where you left off.

·        When you Export to WAV or MP3, you’re creating a completely new Audio file that is the finished edited version of what you created in the Audacity Project. 

 

FITTING THE AUDIO CLIPS INTO THE EDITING WINDOW:

 

Here’s a screen shot of the editing window.  Notice that the audio clips fill the window from 0.0 to 19.0 on the Timeline

 

 

FIT VERTICALLY (if necessary)
Press CTRL+Shift+F to fit the 5 audio clips into the Audacity Editing window Vertically  (Or choose View>Fit Vertically)

 

FIT HORIZONTALLY
Choose View > Zoom Out (as shown above or click on the magnifying glass icon with the “-“ sign) to zoom out on the audio clips so you have some room to the right of the clips.  Do this 3 times.  You need this space to the right so you can “shift” or slide the audio clips to the right.

 

Here’s a screen shot with the Window Zoomed-Out:

 

At this point, all of your audio clips start at 0.0 on the time line.  If you press the play button, you will hear all of them playing at the same time.  You obviously need to move them so that each “voice” is heard one voice after another.

 

NOTE:  You can listen to just one audio track at a time by pressing the Solo button to the left of the track then pressing the “green” Play button.  Click on the Solo button again to turn it off and you can again hear all of the tracks.  You can also Mute, or turn off, individual tracks using the Mute button.

 

THE ORDER OF THE AUDIO CLIPS IN THE FINISHED PROJECT

      Here’s how the clips will be arranged, in order, in your finished project:

1.      Narrator1

2.      Interview1

3.      Narrator2

4.      Interview2

5.      Narrator3

 

MOVING AUDIO TRACKS ON THE TIMELINE:

1.      The Narrator1 track will be the first voice you’ll want to hear so you can just leave it where it’s at on the timeline. 

2.      Select the Time Shift Tool ,        , in the upper left corner of the Audacity Window.  

3.      Move the Time Shift Tool down to the Interview1 track and use it to slide the audio waveform to the right so that the beginning of the waveform starts (lines up) with the end of the narrator1 waveform.

4.      Now, use the Time Shift Tool to slide the narrator2 waveform to the right so that the beginning of its waveform starts (lines up) with the end of interview1 waveform.

5.      Now slide the interview2 waveform to the right so that it starts after the narrator2 waveform ends.

6.      Finally, slide the narrator3 waveform to the right so that it starts after the interview2 waveform ends.

7.      Press the Skip to Start button  ( |<< )  to “rewind” the playback head to the beginning.

Note:  You must be in Stop mode, not Paused, for this button to work.

8.      Press the Play button to playback your completed audio.

9.      Adjust tracks as needed using the Time Shift Tool so that none of the audio clips “talk over” each other and there is a “natural” space (silence) between each clip.

 

You now have a completed “story”.  This is what it should look like:

 

At this point you could consider this a finished project and save the result as a .wav file. 

 

SAVING YOUR FINISHED (EDITED) AUDIO TO A WAVE OR MP3 AUDIO FILE:

 

To save this project as a wave file that can be opened in windows media player or placed into a powerpoint presentation or a video editing application, etc.: Choose File>Export as WAV to export your finished project as a single audio file.

 

Note:  The version of Audacity in the Library does not support MP3 format exporting.   You can download and install an Lame MP3 Encoder from the website listed above and install it on your home system.

 

Distribution:  At this time, I’m not sure how your instructor wants you to turn-in your finished audio files.  However, the finished .wav file can be recorded to an Audio CD-R as either Data or Audio.  If saved as Data, the file will only open on a computer.  If saved for an Audio CD, it will  playback on any Audio CD player AND on a computer.

 

NOW… IF YOU WANT MUSIC:

 

If you want to add music to this project do the following:

  1. Import the sound file, Deemdanna_short.mp3  (Project > Import Audio)
  2. Choose View > Fit Vertically if necessary to fit the additional music track into the Editing Window.
  3. Press the Skip to Start button then the Play button.

 

Problem!  The music gets so loud that you can’t hear the voices!  This needs to be fixed.

 

There are 3 ways to adjust the volume of an audio track in Audacity

 

Method One:

This is the easiest:  Simply adjust the volume of an entire audio track using the “slide” control located to the left of the track.  -15 dB would be about right for the music in this project.

Play it. 

Much better!

 

 

Method Two

Use the Effect Tools to adjust the audio level of an entire clip, a group of clips or part of a clip:

  1. Use the Selection Tool to select (by clicking and dragging) part of a clip, all of a clip or several clips.  In this case, select all of the Narration and Interview clips so they are all “dark grey”.  Do NOT select the Deemdanna_short clip.
  2. Choose Effect > Amplify
  3. You can go with the default setting (New Peak Amplitude (dB) = 0.0) in the Amplify Window (shown below) or adjust the Amplitude up or down as needed.  Go with the default.

 

 

After you click OK, you will see that the “waveforms” for the selected audio clips has changed as seen below:

 

 

Play it again from the start.

You will notice that the voice tracks are now A LOT LOUDER!   So much, in fact, that they completely overwhelm the music track.  You should readjust the music track using the Track Volume Slide Control as you did above so that the volume on the Deemdanna_short track is about -6 dB Gain

 

Method Three:  Using the “Envelope Editing Tool”

 

 

The envelope tool is located in the upper left corner of Audacity.  Click on it to activate it.

 

The Envelope tool is useful if you need to vary the volume of a single track while it’s playing.  For example:  You may want to have the music volume low while someone is talking and louder when no one is talking.

 

If you want to do this, detailed instructions are provided in Audacity. 

Choose Help > On Line Help

Under Contents >  Other, choose Envelope Editing

 

SAVE IT WITH THE MUSIC ADDED

If you added music, you can save your finished audio as described above.

 

ADDITIONAL HELP

Audacity’s On-Line Help files should be all you need to try out some of the other features, like effects, fades, etc.  Play around with them to see what they can do.   All of the effects can be undone so you don’t have to worry about messing things up… but it is always a good idea ot have your latest GOOD state saved.   Most importantly: HAVE FUN!!

 

RECORDING REAL MEDIA AND WINDOWS MEDIA AUDIO FROM WEB SOURCES

 

NOTE: These instructions make this look a lot harder than the task really is but it’s really simple if you follow these directions step-by-step and after doing it once you should agree that it’s really pretty easy!

 

You can not download and import Real Media audio (.rm) or Windows Media (.wma audio from a sound clip or .wmv audio from a video clip) directly into an Audacity project.  You must use Real Player or Windows Media Player to play the audio on your computer and use Audicity to record the audio as it plays.  To do this:

 

  1. Click on the link to the RealMedia or Windows Media Audio or Video Clip
  2. The appropriate player (RealPlayer or Windows Media Player) will open and begin to play the audio (or video) clip on your desktop.  If you can hear it then go to step 3.  If you can’t hear it you need to adjust the volume on your computer or make sure the volume isn’t muted by clicking on the speaker icon located at the bottom right of the window’s toolbar (the one on the bottom of the screen) and adjusting the volume slider or un-checking the mute box.
  3. Stop playing the clip by pressing the stop (not the pause) button on the player.  This will “rewind” the audio clip to the beginning.
  4. Open a NEW Audacity Project and resize the window so you can see the Audacity program AND the RealMedia or Windows media player.
  5. In the upper right section of tools in Audacity (the top tool bar), open the drop down window and select Wave as the source.  (This box should have Microphone selected as the default)  If Wave isn’t an option on your computer, choose Mono Mix as the source.
  6. In Audacity, start recording by clicking on the red record button on the top tool bar.  Audacity will automatically create a new audio track and start recording.
  7. Start playing the Real Media or Windows Media file.  As the audio plays, you should see a “spikes” created on the Audacity audio track that represent the volume of the audio being recorded.  

 

If there’s just a “flat” line on the audio track and the audio is playing, then you need to increase the recording Input Volume by sliding the handle to the right of the little microphone icon on the top toolbar of Audacity to the right until you see that audio is being recorded as indicated by “waveform spikes”.  

 

If you had to do this.  Stop recording.  Delete the Audio track that was created when you started recording.  Then, go back to step 6 above and continue.

  1. Click the Stop button (the button with the black square) in Audacity to stop recording when the clip has been recorded.
  2. You can trim or delete any extra audio that was recorded before the player started playing by USING THE SELECT TOOL  to highlight the portion of the audio track that doesn’t have audio then choosing Edit > Cut or just hitting the Delete Key on the Keyboard.
  3. Now… EXPORT THE AUDIO TRACK AS EITHER A WAV OR MP3.  Make sure to name it.  This is necessary to save the complete audio track so you can import it into your Project and have it in its unedited form.