Audacity: Producing & Recording with Powerful Free Software

One of Audacity's most powerful ways to use it is as an audio editor. To get started with that, we need to bring in some already-recorded audio.

Audacity has some great sound generators built in. In this video we will show how to use them (and why you would want to)

Recording into Audacity is actually really simple. As long as our setup is correct, just a few clicks will get us recording.

Starting with the basics of working with our track in Audacity: Mute, Solo, Panning, Volume... All the basics.

We have an extra set of more advanced options for each track in Audacity. In this video we will look at these options and how to use them.

Basic editing functions work the same as any text editor, except with Audio.

Here we will walk through adding a second (and third and fourth) track, and putting some audio into it.

Now that we have a bunch of audio, and a few tracks, the Time Shift tool gives us more editing control in moving things around to assemble our track.

The Envelope Tool lets us draw volume curves on each individual piece of audio. Very powerful tool.

With the Draw Tool, we can draw a waveform, down at the sample level.

There are two main sections to the Effects Menu, housing two different kinds of effects.

A relatively simple effect, but we will use it demonstrate how effects work in Audacity. (Hint: Its a little different than other programs)

A powerful effect, Changing the Pitch lets us control the pitch separately of the speed.

Changing the speed is just like treating the audio like a vinyl record: slow it down, and the pitch goes down.

The opposite of changing the pitch, Changing the Tempo allows us to change the speed without changing the pitch.

A simple but incredibly useful tool: Quickly add fades to any segment of audio.

Looking at the Spectrum has a lot of uses, including mastering, mixing, and tightening your mix.

Clipping (distortion) can ruin a track if not dealt with. Use this tool to find any spots that need your attention.

This is a new tool, and has an interesting a bright future.

Watch out for AUP files! Be sure when you save your file, you know how you are saving it.

In this video we look at our main audio export functions for full quality, uncompressed audio files.

There is one (big) extra step you need to do to be able to export as an Mp3 file. File the walkthrough in this video to get everything setup correctly.

Looking to go deeper? How to learn more, and a huge top secret tip on another piece of free software that will change your life.

Thats it! Hope you had fun and got a lot out of the class. Please leave questions in the discussion column and I'll get to each one ASAP.

In this video, I'll walk through the various techniques for removing noise in Audacity. I can't say that Audacity is the most powerful tool available for noise removal, but it has a handful of good options for cleaning up your recording.

When it comes to microphones, you need the right tool for the job. In this video I'll show you a case for when a nicer dynamic mic is not the right choice.

I've received a lot of questions about avoiding Feedback. Feedback is painful to your ears, and dangerous to your speakers. In this section I'll explain what it is and how to avoid it.

There is so much more to learn!