Audacity Basics: Recording, Editing, Mixing

hello this is a very quick and simple introduction to the very basics of using audacity I want to cover recording into audacity I want to cover some very simple editing and getting some things like music into it so here I already have the program installed if you want more details you could always go to audacity website they have this great page on mixing and narration with background music you can google that and read much more details which we're professional than I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do first is make sure that I have already plugged in my microphone that's really important I audacity if I plug the mic in after I open it sometimes it gets a little messed up so I'm gonna plug it in and then open the program when I do that I can click this little thing here to choose the mic I want you can see that my computer's like well I don't know you probably wanna record it out of the mic that's built into the computer right and I'm like no I want to use this microphone here the one that sounds a little bit better so if you are plugging a microphone and make sure you pick the right thing now that I've picked the microphone that I want to use assuming I plugged one in maybe I just want to use the one that's already built into the computer what I like to do is do a quick little test to make sure the volume is right I usually do that just by clicking in here right above the mic area when I click it it'll start showing me in live real time a visual representation of this if it looks like super hot super loud I'll adjust it with this little guy I'll move it down a little bit I can't do that right now because I'm using the same microphone for recording this video so who knows what would happen but I would go up and down if I start recording like say by hitting the record button and if these Peaks that you're seeing look really really tall if they're if they're cracking the top and bottom they're like it just stood there then I'm probably want to go back and make them a little bit smaller because in in reality of that that sound it's called clipping the sound of my volume being so loud that it hits the top what will make a little bit of distortion it's usually not a very pleasant sound for readers this is just a test so let's just use it well here I am recording did you see how easy that was by the way I plug in a mic I opened the the program if I want I kind of adjust the volume a little bit and hit record and bam I'm doing this in real time now the the obvious thing is that when I want to stop I can stop okay great now I have this hole thing here if I want to if I want to see the whole thing at once I could do this view fit in window and now I can see by seconds 5 10 15 20 I just did about a 40 second video um I have a few options here that are really pretty simple I I'm talking about a situation here where you might want to work in some music so before I get music in here I want to make my volume a little bit more even you see how in parts of it where I got quieter it didn't go up much at all and it times where I was louder it was kind of a purely big so I like to do something called compression now if I hit control a it'll select the whole thing I could also do that just by clicking the track and you see it's a little darker that's it's kind of like highlighting words in word I'm saying hey I want to do something to everything I just selected if I want I can also choose a selection tool up here and kind of select different parts but I want to I want to do something to this whole thing I want to compress this whole bit so I'm gonna select the whole thing go to effects go to compressor now compressor might be a weird term for you might not be used to it you might see a whole lot of scary things here well if you want more details about ideal ways to adjust this remember that that page I got here it kind of has some suggestion things a lot of times I just leave it as default it'll default to the thing I did last time I'm just gonna hit OK and show you what happens watch the visual representation all of a sudden it's a little more even that part that was a little quieter there's a little louder the part that was really loud sometimes is even a little bit quieter and the whole thing sounds a little more even tone well that's great that means that I can put music underneath it not be worried about the places I was talking quiet every being really quiet okay it's a it's a really simple really easy little thing to do select all compress now what I want to do is get some music or some sound effects or something in here so what I'm gonna do is go to someplace where I have some music well here's a weird piece I'm gonna drag this file into my audacity program and you see what would happen is it literally dragged it in as a whole separate track underneath it this is everything I just did remember a second ago we were kind of zoomed in a little bit more so it took up more of the whole screen but now this new track is playing underneath so if I hit play you would the things I said and at the exact simultaneous moment you know I could say it 15 seconds you would hear that track underneath it now I'm gonna zoom out a little bit I'm doing control and holding the rollerball in the mouse that kind of zooms me in and out I like that a lot you can see that this audio track is way longer than my 40 seconds of talking so I probably don't want the whole thing I probably want to cut something I might want to cut something of my narration and my own might want to cut something of this audio too so let's let's do it one at a time let's say I only want that first 40 seconds of the music assuming that that's exactly the part I want I'm gonna highlight it I can only do that because I chose the select tool here first I'm gonna highlight what I want and when I've highlighted I'm just gonna hit the delete button on the keyboard BAM it's gone wow how easy and simple now again to make it easier I can kind of zoom in and out remember with my mic control rollerball thing okay so now here's my talking here's this part now I might still have parts up here where I'm like oh I really want to to delete this part maybe this is all a mistake same thing right I can highlight I can hit delete I can do that however much I want no say that the music really starts getting really good right here at about this twenty second moment and I'm like oh I really wish my audience could kind of hear some of that music right there well what I like to do is split the track I so I put my cursor where I want it to go and then I can go to edit clip boundaries and split you see it also tells you control I will do it I use control I so much more watch what happens when I hit that split well barely anything you could see there's a little bit of a line at now between this that means that I'm gonna zoom in you can see this stuff on one side is different than the stuff on the other side now if I want to accentuate that if I want to make that a little clearer I'm gonna click up here to these tools and I'm gonna click this one that's a time shift tool that essentially means I can drag stuff around let me let me show you what happens when I drag when I when I try to click and drag on this bottom track with the time shift tool the whole thing moves now I can't I can't select things the way I used to right if I want to select something I to go back to the Select tool highlight it but if I want to move it around I click time shift tool now I can move stuff well you see how this whole track is moving well I just split this top track so now I can move the in different places does that make sense that they they get dragged separately there they're thought of as whole different clips and I can be really useful when I'm trying to time my words with my music so I'm like ooh there's this really interesting part of music I wanted to come right there and there'd be a little bit of silence in my words as it as it comes back in that can be really really sweet right okay so so that's easy enough right we're splitting tracks with ctrl I or edit clip boundary split we're moving them around using the time shift tool okay so now this might be almost really good this almost B might be worth me exporting and and letting other people listen to accept my volume probably isn't levelled out for instance this remember volume is a feature of how up and down it is how close it is to the top this looks kinda loud in relation to my talking which also is about the same light I probably want that music a little bit quieter now there's a few different ways to do that I'm gonna show you the way I like to I like to use this envelope tool I'm gonna click that and you see the second I clicked it all of a sudden things look a little different here it's like what's going on what I do is I is I click at a point in a track and you see what it did is it made this itty-bitty little dot there after I click there I can adjust the volume of the things before that and after it up so I clicked that so now that's kind of like a pivot now I'm gonna click in a space before it and watch what happens I can kind of manually adjust everything before and after that pivot and remember smaller means quieter so what I'm doing here is I can make another pivot here I can make this part in the middle kind of louder if I want so it feels a little bit more accentuated remember because the speaking stopped at that moment and then when I start talking again I can drag another one and everything after that pivot point will get quieter I can you know you can you can see I can kind of use it to fade a little bit to make it a little more interesting if I'm like oh that's still too loud like again I'll just drag it again and kind of even that out this is a lot of playing around I know it kind of looks weird here but I in real life I'm I'm constantly playing back the whole time to hear what it sounds like um the easiest way to do that is to just click this top bar so if I'm like I want to hear what it sounds like starting right here you click the start that bar and it'll start playing back right at that moment now you you can't hear it because of the setup on my computer right now but it I swear it's there it's playing it so I'm like is that quiet enough I've hit play no I'll make it a little quieter and I come back and I grab that and make a little letter whatever now remember if I want to select something I gotta go back to that select tool I can still go back select things on one track on either track you remember click there to select the whole thing and I and I could still do various effects to it even after I've done that it's called the envelope tool remember I I kind of think of it as a adjust the volume tool that's that's the the most basic things I find myself doing all the time I record I compress I split I move and I adjust the volume with envelope ok let's say this is perfect let's say it's exactly how I want I'm gonna go back to the fit in window ctrl F just to kind of see the whole thing here so I know now that I'm gonna have one audio track where the music keeps going after the voice ends it's about 50 seconds long say that's fine great well there's two different ways to save in audacity if I hit file save project as I'm saving this whole project as an AUP file which only audacity can open I'm essentially saving this as something that I can come back to later so if I'm like call this like test for video then I can I can say this walk away and come back but I can't email that test for video AUP file to someone they they can't open it up and be like oh I'm like grooving to this cool thing you may know it's not listenable by them yet I need to export this first into an audio file that can be shared so that's actually not that hard I'm gonna go to file and export you notice export is different than save right that that word is on purpose export means I'm gonna make this so someone else can listen now I'm gonna have some choices the first option here is dot wave now that's gonna sound like really good quality but it's also gonna be this mega huge it's gonna be hard for me to share with anyone and if you're doing this from my class you might have to upload this file somewhere that doesn't let you have too many file that might not let you upload a really really huge file so I'm gonna click the save as type and pick one of these often I choose August you might not have heard of that it's kind of an alternative version of mp3 but you might have obviously heard of an mp3 - let's it let's just try let's try the mp3 want to kind of see what happens I'm gonna go go back and put it on the desktop I'm just gonna call it test for video again now you do see it gives me some options you could play around with it's always worth seeing I I think of the the bigger this number the better it's gonna sound even a 320 kpbs's isn't gonna sound it is it gonna be the hugest file so gonna be much smaller than that wave so I might as well pick the big one I'm gonna leave the rest of that hit okay now when I hit save it's gonna be like hey wait these are all gonna be mixed down to two straight and don't worry about that yeah that's that's fine okay now it automatically here is filling in some of this info with the info of the song I import it well that's that's not right I don't want when someone plays my new mp3 file in in iTunes or something I don't want it to say oh this is a truck by combustible Edison it's called vertigo well no it's not this is a track by me so I'm gonna hit clear clear all that out fill some stuff in here that works um you know track title is test for a video if you don't have an album title or a track number or whatever that's fine I sometimes think it's kind of cool to keep track of the stuff I don't know I I do like audio test it so then later on if I'm like man where's that audio test and I have a some program open that I'm using to listen to music I use when a up I can search when they up for the genre audio testing oh there it is I'd comment whatever whatever leave the rest of this hit okay it's gonna think about it BAM I have my file now so wherever it is I saved that mp3 file I can now share that with other people that's it it's really that easy I know it looks like it wasn't that easy but I swear it is get in there and play around give it a shot bye

Channel: Kyle Stedman

Views: 1,677,258

Rating: 4.8442411 out of 5

Keywords: audacity, sound editing, recording, mixing, Rockford University, rhetoric, multimodal, sound, digital rhetoric, microphones, Audio Editing Software, Record

Id: 8ClwSNm362E

Length: 13min 15sec (795 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 25 2015