I’m going to assume that you already read over Part 1 for this lesson and did the exercise – if you haven’t done so yet you really should or you’ll be really lost. I guess if you are just reading this for some quick ideas then you don’t need it, but if you aren’t you really should read over part 1.
Today we are going to take the file we created yesterday that says, “This is hot ali and the nooge is hot” and make it sound better. If you recall the last lesson we took a .mp3 file and cut it up to make it say what we wanted it to say, but now we are going to make it SOUND like we want. You can do all the of the cutting of files you want, but if it sounds bogus no one is going to believe that hot Ali thinks the Nooge is hot!
What You need for this Tutorial
- The finished file from part 1 (If you don’t have this you are totally going to be lost. I was debating weather I should just offer it as a download but I figure you can go to part 1 and make it on your own. I’m here to teach you, not do you…errrr…that sounded terrible.)
The Lesson
In Part 1 I helped get you familiar with some very simple audacity processes, importing and exporting and also some very simple editing processes. In this part we are going to work on some different editing processes that we can use in audacity. Just to be clear I don’t recommend editing .mp3s to make them say what you want, but in this case it’s OK because I’m taking Hot Ali’s (who is one of our favorite guests on the show) audio track and making it say what she probably meant to say.
The Steps
Step 1
- Open Audacity and import the file from yesterday. I told you to save it as “Audacity Tutorial Part 1″. If you didn’t you should remember what it was.
*For help on this step refer to Part 1 Steps 1-2
Step 2
- Now that you have imported the file from yesterday give it a play to familiarize yourself with what it sounds like.
- You’ll probably notice a few parts that right away make it sound pieced together, I’ll bold them in the sentence below.
“This is Hot Ali and The Nooge is Hot”
- You can hear that we have 2 hot spots, but can you see them?
Can you find the hot spots?
Step 3
- We are going to determine why the spots are “hot”.
- Spots get hot for a variety of reasons when doing this type of editing, the number one reason is that the “Tempo” doesn’t jive.
- This is the case for our first hot spot “The Nooge”.
- What it seems to be in this case is that “The Nooge” is a little bit louder and comes up on us a little bit quicker than we would like.
Step 4
- Let’s start by “Fixing” The Nooge (OK- it won’t fix perfectly but it will make it better.)
- Using the selection tool highlight ONLY the area where you can hear “The Nooge”. You WILL need to zoom, so do that as well.
- It will look like this:
Remember to ZOOM to find your area
Step 5
- The first thing we are going to do is SLIGHTLY change the pitch of this section (REMEMBER ONLY SLIGHTLY PEOPLE) because it sounds like Ali drops down low to say “The Nooge”.
- Click on Effect>Change Pitch…
- A box should open with a few things you want to do the following:
- Make sure that the UP button circle is filled.
- Change the “Semitones” box to .15.
- Hit OK
- LEAVE EVERYTHING ELSE ALONE!!!
Step 6
- Now we should play the file again.
- Make sure the area is UNSELECTED and you hit play.
- It should sound a little bit better.
- Now what we want to do is bring that level DOWN a bit (make it a bit softer.)
- Once again using the selection tool highlight just the area that sounds like “The Nooge”
- Go to Effect>Amplify..
- In the box that says “Amplification” type -1.6
- Press OK
- Play the whole track…again sounds a little bit better right?
Step 7
- So it sounds a little better, we aren’t going to be making any sort of ground breaking type moves today, the goal is to learn how to use the effects tools.
- Now we have “Hot” at the very end of the .mp3 – how should we fix this?
- Using the selection tool highlight the area of the track that sounds like “Hot”.
- Go to Effect>Amplify..
- In the box that says “Amplification” type -2.3
- Play back.
Step 8
- Again using the selection Tool highlight the area of the track that sounds like “Hot” (be careful to the the FULL word this time, no extras.)
- Go to Effect>Change Tempo
- When it asks for the percent change type -19.0
- click OK
- Play back. The key here is the playback, if you didn’t highlight the EXACT area we needed it’s going to make it funny, but that’s ok.
- In case of an error you can always go to Edit>Undo.
Step 9
- We now have this slightly better sounding track, it isn’t great, but it’s better and we learned some things. Now let’s see what else we can do to it.
- Highlight the WHOLE track with the selection too.
- Go to Effect>Leveller…
- This box that opens is going to have a few option the first is degree of Levelling (let’s go heavy today)
- The second option is “Threshold for noise” I like to do -80db when I’m doing things like this
* Quick note as to why I do this, the leveler helps everything sound kinda the same, and if it makes it a bit grimey good…makes it seem like a legit thing then doesn’t it?
- OK – click OK and then play back. Can you notice a difference?
Step 10
- Well, we just learned some editing steps, let’s export this as a .mp3.
- Use the steps you learned in lesson 1 to do so, if you skipped it go back and learn how.
Step 11
- Use whatever you use to play .mp3s to listen to the track again.
- You should be able to notice some parts where we can do even MORE editing to make it sound right (again you should be able to CLEARLY hear some tempo issues.)
- We should have our levels all correct though, and a degree of “grime”, as I call it, that will help the recording sound correct.
HOMEWORK:
- You have the tools to fix this audio track. Do it.
- I expect a FULL report on how it went, remember what I taught you and you should be able to slow some “hot spots” down to the proper speed.
Review
Today was probably very frustrating as you were trying to isolate the proper parts that you wanted to edit. The thing I hope that was taken away was that the selection and magnify tools are going to be the #1 and #2 things that you use in audacity as an editor so you better get comfortable with them. Does it matter how your hot ali .mp3 turned out? Not at all. Today is the last day we are going to use it, you can throw it out when you’re done if you want, all I wanted to do with Parts 1 & 2 was get you familiar with some of the things that audacity has to offer as an editing software. The next lesson we are going to get into “Recording”. I always start with the editing/basics lessons first because I like everyone to get a feel for how to do things like select a portion of a track and edit it because there ARE going to be times when there is a mistake on a track that you can EDIT out – now you know how to edit a bit, we’ll work on the recording for the next few parts.
As always you can email me or post a question – and remember if you couldn’t get the “sound” right today it’s OK. Just as long as you know how to do the editing and selecting. Today was a hard lesson and in retrospect I should probably have just pushed it back, but we need some of these tools for the next few parts.
July 7th, 2009 at 7:47 pm
Thanks for the easy to follow steps. It helps being able to be led through it by someone who actually knows what they’re doing
July 9th, 2009 at 2:15 am
great content and quite simple to follow..just wondering how long that i could take to learn and practice this all.but,thanx anyway
July 9th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Very thorough article. Excellent work. I use Audacity for my Podcast and I managed to figure out the basic steps, but this info will definitely enhance my audio presentations.
July 10th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
First, this is a great site. Second, about your article, thanks so much for the tutorial, I´ve been trying to really use audacity, you´ve been a help.
October 21st, 2009 at 11:12 am
good tutorial thank you so much