Westsidewill – Wild Off The Air

Someone actually wrote me asking me if I knew how to do those “cool” chipmunk remixes that you find on youtube using Audacity…yes. But they aren’t cool.

However, this will be a nice exercise for all of us to learn some editing effects that could be used in the future if you have some sort of project you want to do this for. And we aren’t going to be doing this some easy way either…we’re going to do it the way so we learn something!

What You Need For This Tutorial
- Audacity (Do I really need to say that?)
- A .mp3 of a song you want to “chipmunk”

The Lesson

This may seem like a fairly useless exercise, but I think we will be able to learn and get comfortable with some simple editing techniques that could come in handy later on in our adventure with Audacity.

Step 1
- Select what song you want to “Chipmunk”…
- Open audacity

Step 2
- Import the .mp3 you want to chipmunk (Remember that’s File>import…)

Step 3
- Make sure you have the entire audio file that you have imported “selected”

Step 4
- Go to Effect>Change Speed

- That box should pop up. Select From 33 1/3 to 45.
- Click OK

Step 5
- That move should have shortened your whole track and managed to speed things up. Listen to it now.
- It sounds kinda like the chipmunks but it’s WAY too fast right?

Step 6
- We have to fix that tempo and make it roughly the same length as the original track.
- Import the ORIGINAL .mp3 again – it should now appear under your new track.

Step 7
- You should now see just how much shorter your new version is than the original. We want to fix that.
- Be sure you still have your version selected – you don’t want to edit the original that you just imported.
- Go to Effects>Change Tempo…
- You are going to want to change the tempo roughly -35.0% (do that and click OK)

Step 8
- Compare the lengths.
- You should see that they are almost identical, remember that you can do more tempo changes if you want to get them exactly correct.
- Hit play.
- You should now hear that while they sound like chipmunks, the tempo is the same.

Step 9
- Pat yourself on the back. You just “chipmunk’d” a track.

Step 10
- You don’t need to export this, unless you really want to. I don’t know why you’d want a track like that, but whatever you can do what you want. Just remember the steps that we did here today, it should help us with editing in the future.

Review

While chimpumking a track may seem like a stupid waste of time, and a good way to ruin a track, it wasn’t for us today. We learned how to change the pitch of a track and make it sound “chipmunky” without using the easy “Change Pitch” effect that sometimes doesn’t work like it should. There is nothing wrong with learning alternate ways to do things today, am I right? The more ways you know how to do something the better off you are.

So it’s becoming a pretty big thing for people to turn their vinyl albums into .mp3’s, why? I have no idea, but I know for a fact people want to do this. My dad even asked me, “Do you know how to turn these vinyl albums and make them save on my computer.” Which was his way of asking if there was a way to take the tracks from the album’s and put them on his computer cheap/free and I said yep.

So let’s do it together STEP BY STEP (this may be kind of tricky so stay with me.)

What you need for this tutorial

- Audacity…really? It is an Audacity tutorial…so don’t be too surprised! You can download it here: Audacity Then you can read through our previous tutorials found here: Tutorials

- A turntable. It must have the Red/White stereo outs!!! Note: If your turntable/record player doesn’t have the red/white outs BUT you have it plugged into a mixer that does have the red/white outs then you can just use those.

- Because of the above you are going to need this wire, stereo (red/white) to computer:

(I was able to find one for under a buck.)

The Lesson

Keeping your Vinyl safe and in great shape gets harder and harder the older it gets. What we are going to do in this tutorial is lead you through step by step on how to record your vinyl albums to .mp3’s and not have to worry about breaking out the vinyl every time you want to hear a great track. There are going to be some limitations however, for example we can record in stereo but because of the wire we use to connect the record player/turntable to the computer it is going to be mixed down into one feed. So it’s going to be 2 identical stereo tracks. If that makes sense. However, I think the quality is still pretty good, and some of you may even have computers with sound cards that have the white/red ins so you don’t need to worry about the wire mixing it down.

Step 1
- Attach your stereo to computer wire to your turntable and computer. The turntable ends, (white/red) match with the white/red stereo outs on the turntable, that should be easy. The computer end goes into your “Microphone” jack. (It should be pink on the back of a PC or on a laptop it’s found on the side with a little picture of a microphone above it and it’s black.)

Step 2
- Start Audacity

Step 3
- Go to Edit > Preferences

Step 4
- Under the Audio I/O (on the left menu) be sure your settings for PLAYBACK and Recording are your sound card! (In most cases MME: Microsoft Sound Mapper) Also be sure the recording mode is set to 2 channel (Stereo)

- Check out my settings:

Step 5
- BEFORE YOU CLICK OK CHECK THE BOX THAT SAYS “Software Playthrough: Play new track while recording or monitoring.
- This one is important, so you can actually HEAR what you are recording, and you stop the recording process as the right time (I’m going to assume you want to record each track as it’s own .mp3)

Step 6
- Click OK

Step 7
- At this point you are going to be ready to start recording. Make sure your record is on your turntable.
- Hit the Record button on Audacity FIRST, then push play on the turntable.

Step 8
- You should now SEE the recording on audacity PLUS hear the recording coming out of your speakers. (There will be a slight delay in what you see and hear from what is actually being recorded.)

Step 9
- At the completion of the first track push STOP on audacity. And push pause on your turntable.

Step 10
- Now we are going to play this back. Make sure the tracking (search) bar is at the very beginning of the recording session and now hit Play.
- You should hear what you recorded. Using the tools that we learned in the first few Tutorials you can now edit the track down to what is just the first track.

Step 11
- You can either save this after the editing OR you can turn it straight into a .mp3 (again refer to our earlier tutorials if you don’t know how to do this yet.)

You can repeat steps 7-11 as many times as you want for as many albums as you want!

Review

Being able to take those old vinyl albums and turn them into .mp3s so you can put them on your .mp3 players or wherever you want to put them is a great thing! The problems you are going to run into is that this does record in real time, so you have to have an hour or so on hand each and every record you want to turn into a .mp3. It’s a slightly longer process BUT the benefit is you don’t have to spend $100 PLUS turning those vinyl tracks into .mp3s. Nothing beats being able to do this for less than a buck right?

As always if you have any questions you can leave them in comments below.

Today we are going to have some fun with Audacity. I’ve had quite a few questions about if you could use Audacity to record audio straight off your computer and the answer to that is yes!

Well how would we do that? (I’m sure you ask)…Well I’ll tell you with a handy tutorial!

What You Need For This Tutorial

- Audacity…If you don’t have Audacity then why exactly are you reading this tutorial? Audacity is free…so download it if you don’t have it.

- 1/8″ Audio Jack Wire (Dual Male Wire to be exact…check the image)

*You can get a 4 METER wire for like 3 bucks on eBay…go to your local computer/audio store and get a short one for like a buck…

- (Optional) 1/8″ splitter (Check the image)

The Lesson

There are all sorts of situations when you want to LEGALLY record something that you are listening to on your computer and using audacity and a $1 wire you can! If you are like me you hate downloading weird “free” programs that you know exactly zero about and with the way viruses spread today it’s probably safer to not download anything if you don’t have to.

The Steps

Step 1
- Before you do anything there are 2 ways to go about this, you can have a “Splitter” handy if you want to hear what you are recording OR if you know what you are recording sounds like you don’t have to have a splitter. It’s a matter of preference. The wiring is going to be SLIGHTLY different, it’s not difficult so we’ll talk about both.
- So Step 1 is technically for you to decide if you want to hear what you are recording. If you do, get the splitter for the $1 or less at the store.

Step 2
- The first thing we are going to do is set our wiring up.
- If you are using a PC with speakers plugged into the speaker (Green) jack in the back UNPLUG the speaker.

*For laptops you are going to be using the HEADPHONES jack instead of the GREEN speaker jack…so make note and adjust accordingly.

Step 3
- Now that we have NOTHING in our green port we are going to plug one end of our Dual Male 1/8″ wire into the GREEN (SPEAKER PORT)
- OPTIONAL If you are going to want to HEAR what you are recording plug your splitter into the green (speaker) port FIRST – then plug the 1/8″ male plug into ONE of the jacks in the splitter. In the other jack plug whatever was in your green port in there. If you were not using speakers you can plug headphones into the other jack.

Step 4
- Plug the other end of the dual 1/8″ male wire into the Microphone (usually pink) jack.
*On a laptop it will not be color coded.

Step 5
- Open Audacity

Step 6
- Go to Edit>Preferences

Step 7
- Under the Audio I/O (on the left menu) be sure your settings for PLAYBACK and Recording are your sound card! (In most cases MME: Microsoft Sound Mapper)
- Check out my settings:

- Hit OK

Step 8
- What do you want to record? Make sure that it’s playing NOW.

Step 9
- Hit the “Record” button in Audacity.
- You should now be able to see audacity recording whatever it is that you are trying to record.

Step 10
- Record all you want…
- When you’re ready you can hit STOP.
- Once you STOP recording if you wish you can edit what you recorded however you would like. Check out previous tutorials for editing tips.

Step 11
- Towards the bottom of Audacity should be listed how much “recording” time/space you have available on your drive. That’s something to make note of if you plan on recording something that will go on awhile.

* REMEMBER KEEP IT LEGAL! IF YOU WANT TO RECORD/REBROADCAST ANY NFL/MLB/NBA GAMES BE SURE TO GET THE EXPRESSED WRITTEN CONSENT OF THE LEAGUE AND TEAMS!!!!!!

Review

Recording something off your computer with Audacity is super simple and a whole ton safer than using some program that you don’t know anything about. It will cost you about $2 for all the wires and splitters that you will need (but I bet if you have owned a computer before you may have the wire laying around.) This isn’t something that should be used to do illegal stuff it is however a great tool to use legally.

As always if you have any questions let me know.

In Part 3 of this tutorial we went over some real basic steps for how to create a recording using audacity. We also broke down the “how – to” of getting audacity to recognize that you are using a recording device. Today I want to have another fairly easy lesson using all of the tools that we have learned in Parts 1, 2 & 3.

What You Need For This Tutorial:

- You need a recording device that you know how to get audacity to recognize that we used in Part 3

- You will also need some sort of .mp3 instrumental or music. You can find a bunch of them online if you don’t have any…but I have a hard time believing that you don’t have at least one music .mp3 on your computer. However, if you don’t leave a comment or shoot me an email and I can give you one that I made.

The Lesson

What I really want to get accomplished in this part is for you to feel comfortable adding a .mp3 to your track and recording over it. I’d also like it if you can listen to the playback and understand what part of the track needs to be amplified to make it sound right.

The Steps

Step 1
- Refer to Part 3 of this tutorial. Follow the steps to open and set up audacity if you have not yet done so. If you have, open audacity like you know how to getting it to recognize your recording device (which it should do automatically but it’s always best to double check.)

Step 2
- The first thing we are going to do in our actual project is import the .mp3 background that you want to use. Remember it can be anything, even a track with words, we are just using this to learn that we can in fact record over music.
- File>Import>Audio…
- Find your file and let it import

Step 3
- Once the track is imported it should look like this:

- We are now going to record something over the track. (A quick side note, you should be able to hear your .mp3 through your output device that you selected in part 3. This is important because you will hear the playback as you record so you know where you are in time.)
- Now that your mic and playback is set up, hit the record button.
- You will see that you are recording in “real time”.
- Record a quick something then hit stop.

Step 4
- Make sure the tracking is all the way at the beginning of your recording and hit play.
- You should be able to hear what you recorded.
- At this point you have to make a determination, can you hear yourself clearly? Is the music too loud? Are your vocals too loud?

Step 5
- Based on your earlier determination we are now going to make an adjustment:

- On that volume control you are going to decide what to do, bringing the slider towards the “minus” sign makes it quieter, and bringing it towards the “plus” makes it louder. Simple right?
- So, if you want to make your vocals stand out more, bring the audio track’s volume control closer to the minus and bring the vocal track’s slider towards the plus.
- Fiddle with it until you feel right about it.

Step 6
- Now we are going to do a quick trim of the area that has your vocals on it.
- When you trim be sure to just get the area you spoke over.
- You’ll notice now when you trim audacity will trim BOTH tracks.
- You should just have your vocals over the .mp3 now.

Step 7
- You should now see how your vocals and the music mix, and you should have a pretty good balance going between the two track.s
- With that in mind we are now going to export this as a .mp3 and see how you did.
- Remember how to export a track to a .mp3? Return to part 1 and check it out if you don’t.
- Export the tracks as a .mp3

Step 8
- Now we are going to see how it turned into just one stereo track.
- File>new

Step 9
- We have a blank audacity page open again.
- Import the .mp3 you just created.

Step 10
- That is what your new .mp3 looks like. Cool right?

Step 11
- Close it down. We don’t need it for anything else today.

Review

In what seems like another easy day at the controls of audacity we actually learned quite a bit. You have learned how to record over music, and how to mix the music and the vocals together to make it sound like it’s one solid track. Then you learned how to turn that one solid track into an actual solid track (.mp3) and open it back up in audacity and see what it looks like. This is going to be important for Part 5 when we learn how to do even more editing to a track that has vocals and music on it and is already one track.

As always any questions you can leave them as comments OR email me.

After parts 1&2 we now have the tools to start recording using Audacity. If you have not yet read over parts 1&2 I would take the time to do that now if you are not familiar with Audacity. What we are going to do in Part 3 is learn how to set Audacity up for recording using whatever device it is you use to record AND do some basic recording.

What You Need For This Tutorial:

- Some sort of recording device (Read: Microphone) that you can hook up to your computer.
I’m just going to be using a cheap “Samson” mic and a Toneport UX2. You don’t need anything fancy for today. It could could even be a mic you plug straight into your computer using the microphone jack on your sound card.

The Lesson

While it may seem obvious to some setting up your recording software so you can actually record is a daunting task at times for new users. So today we are going to explain how when you open up audacity you actually get the darn thing to recognize that you have a mic plugged in and how to get it to record.

The Steps

Step 1
- Depending on what sort of microphone or I/O device you are using you may have to open the “preamp” software before you open audacity. I’m using the Toneport UX2 as my “USB Box” so I’m going to have to open its software first (Gearbox.) So if you need to open your software do it now (if you just have a mic plugged right into your computer you do not need to do this.)

Step 2
- Open Audacity.

Step 3
- Now that we have Audacity opened we are going to go to Edit>Preferences.
- The very top selection in the prefrences side menu bar (found on the left side of the preferences box) says “Audio I/O”.
- It will look like this:

Step 4
- Be sure under the recording header on the right side of the box that the “Device” selected is your device. If it is not the device you are using click on the selected device and see if it appears under the drop down. (If you just plugged a chepo mic into the microphone jack then most likely your device will be “MME: Sound mapper input”)
- For this example be sure the “channels” selection is 2(stereo) like the example pic I posted above.
- Click OK

Step 5
- We just set audacity up to recognize our microphone, now let’s figure out how to record.
- This is by far the most simple step we have. All you have to do is click the “Record” button (The Red Circle if you are new to this).
- You should see the recording process start as soon as you hit the button, say something into the mic and it should look like this:

Step 6
- Hit stop to stop the recording.
- Hit play to listen to it in playback.
- You’ll probably notice that you can now SEE what your words sound like (kind of like what we talked about in Part 2.) After awhile you’ll get a feel for being able to pick out what parts of your recording are going to give you a pop.

Step 7
- Record something that is :10 long.
- You should notice that there is a bit of a delay from what you say to when it actually gets recorded (we call that latency.)
- Make note of that we are going to need to know that in part 4 when we record over some music.

Step 8
- We don’t need to save any of these files today, just make note of what you are doing and play around with it a bit. Part 4 we are going to have some fun and do some more “advanced” recording.

Review

Today was by far the easiest of the 3 tutorials that we have had thus far, but the best thing about this step is that it is simple! I mean who wants to have some recording software that is harder than it should be? A simple click and record is always my favorite thing – by the way, if you had any trouble with your playback on your track you should go back into your preferences and check to make sure that your playback device selected is the one that you want to actually use.

Again, this was a super easy day but that doesn’t mean there won’t be questions. If you have any you can email me or post them below.

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?

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:

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.

Let’s start today’s blog out with a little something I like to call the “Truth Tree” let’s all climb up and tell the truth to each other…some of you suck at recording. That doesn’t mean you suck at music, it means you can’t seem to figure out how to record or edit your track and make it sound right. We sound better with our on-location equipment that we’ve been using this summer! Ok. It doesn’t mean I don’t love you, I’m just not IN LOVE with your recording. But I still want to save “US” so I’m going to teach you how to record and edit…and I figure the best way to do this is to teach you all how to use a FREE SOFTWARE to do it. Who doesn’t love free stuff.

What You need for this tutorial:

- Audacity 1.3.7 (I use this because I have Vista, and all of the parts of the tutorial are going to be based off this. The other version is stable but it will look a bit different.)

- Lame.dll(You need this to export the finished product of all things audacity into a .mp3 – the link provides the steps needed to install.)

- Download: Ali Bump (We are going to use this .mp3 for editing purposes today so DL it for the lesson.) Click the name to download.

The Lesson

Today we are going to start off very basic and familiarize ourselves with the basic controls and lay out of audacity. There will be no recording today, you see how I didn’t mention anything about mics or i/o above? Yeah, there is a reason for this. You can’t just jump in and record on any software, even the free kinds. What we are going to do today is learn how to import a track into audacity, how to edit that track, and how to export it all into a .mp3. I’m going to assume that before we get into step 1 that you have installed audacity AND the lame.dll.

The Steps

Step 1
- Open Audacity. If this is your first time opening Audacity it will give you some message about what you can do with audacity and all that stuff, for right now you can just close it (it’s always a good idea to read through that stuff, but for right now you can close it.)
- What you should have now is an empty screen with no tracks. It should look something like this:

All I really want you to see from that is that the screen is empty…which you can clearly see.

Step 2
- Now we are going to put something into that screen (remember where you downloaded Ali Bump.mp3 on your computer because now we are going to need it.)
- Go to File>Import>Audio… and when the box appears find where you put the Ali Bump.mp3 and import it now.
- It should now look something like this:

- Hit play and confirm that it sounds right. Which it should.

Step 3
- Now lets have some fun, select the “Selection Tool” it’s the one that looks like a cursor that you use…to SELECT text…hence the name.
- Click, Hold, and drag – like you were going to highlight some text – to highlight some audio. Highlight a selection now and hit the play button.
- You should find that it will now only play what you have highlighted. Play around with that for a minute or two so you get a feel for it.

Step 4
- Select the “Zoom Tool” it looks like a magnifying glass.
- Now what we are going to do with that is click it one time on the track so we can see a little bit better what we are doing.
- Your track should look like this:

- Now hit play. You’ll notice it looks like it’s moving faster and you can make out the spaces in the audio a little bit. That’s going to be important for the editing that is coming up next.

Step 5
- Go back to the selection tool.
- What you are going to try to do now is highlight just the area of audio where it sounds like, “Hi this is hot ali and” (She kind of slurs and/your together so cut it somewhere that it feels right.)
- This is going to take some trial and error, remember you can use your ZOOM and highlight tools to help you.
- It should look something like this:

Step 6
- Now we are going to click the ‘Trim’ button. (Or you can go to Edit>Trim.)
- Now we have this:

Step 7 (Optional for some)
- Now take the “Time Shift Tool”, the line with arrows on each end, and slide the selected part to the beginning. (Of course this only needs to happen if you cut off the second or so of empty air at the beginning of the .mp3. You didn’t have to, but you could.)

Step 8
- Now that we have just the audio we want, we are going to have some more fun. Again go to File>Import>Audio… and select the hot ali bump again.
- You should now see that you have 2 tracks like below:

Step 9
- Click on the 2nd Ali bump that you imported and click the button that says “Solo”. This button can be found on the left side of the Track under the track name next to the button that says “Mute”.
- When you click the solo button the track above should turn gray, and when you hit play the only track you hear is the one that was selected as the “solo”.

Step 10
- Now that we have the 2nd Ali Bump as a solo let’s do some more editing.
- Using the magnify and select tools find in the track where she says, “The Nooge” and highlight just that audio.
- Again use the trim tool.

Step 11
- Click the “Solo” button again, now both tracks should be blue.
- Using the “Time Shift” tool bring the 2nd track back so that it starts where the first ends.
- It will look like this:

Step 12
- We are going to import yet another copy of the ali bump into this project. File>Import>Audio…

Step 13
- Again “Solo” the newest ali bump in your project.

Step 14
- Now using the Selection and Zoom tools find the area of the track where Hot Ali says “Is Hot” and highlight it.

Step 15
- Hit the Trim button.

Step 16
- Slide this 3rd track to the end of the second track using the “Time Shift Tool”
- And hit that solo button again so that all tracks are once again blue.

Step 17
- Your track should now say, “This is Hot Ali and The nooge is Hot.”
- Kind of choppy, but it gets the job done right?

Step 18
- We are now going to make this a .mp3
- Click on File>Export
- Now there should be a “Edit Metadata” box open. Something like this:

Step 19
- We are going to edit that data.
- In the Artist name field put your name.
- In the Track Title put ‘The nooge is hot’
- In the Album Title Field put ‘Audacity Tutorial Part 1′
- You can leave the rest blank and hit the “OK” button.

Step 20
- It should now have a “save” box opened. Be sure that it says MP3 Files under the “Save Type” field.
- Remember where you are saving this and save it as “Audacity Tutorial Part 1″
- It should export the file as a .mp3 now.
- Find the .mp3 and play it using whatever you use to play a .mp3 normally. (You should see the Artist name, and track info will show up as what we entered it as.)
- You can now close audacity, it will ask you if you want to save, you can if you want, but I’m not going to. We have the .mp3 we are going to need for tomorrows lesson.

Review

After today you should be fairly comfortable importing a track, selecting a portion of the track, and trimming it. You should also be familiar with the Time shift tool AND the zoom function.

Tomorrow we are going to edit that track using some other features to see if we can’t make it sound like we didn’t just piece it together. If you have any questions please leave a comment and I’ll do my best to answer it.