Book Image

Getting started with Audacity 1.3

Book Image

Getting started with Audacity 1.3

Overview of this book

Using the Audacity software as the starting off point, we discuss what the software is, what it can do, how you can use it, and where you go to get started installing it. All of this information is grounded in some basic audio editing terminology and background for those that aren't so technology inclined.Then we'll start digging into a sample project! You'll learn about how to set up a project, create a voice track, record an interview with Skype, and basic audio editing techniques. All of this done in an easy to follow, task based approach with lots of examples. Here, we plan to go a step further, we teach how to wrap all of these steps together and create a podcast that can be posted on your own website or blog.There's always more you can do with Audacity! The last portion of the book is dedicated to just that - discussing more advanced editing and mixing techniques, using affects, adding music, adding additional plug-ins to the software. All still incorporating examples and easy to follow tasks you can try on your own audio projects.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Getting started with Audacity 1.3
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
Preface
9
Giving Your Audio Some Depth: Applying Effects
Toolbar, Menu, and Keyboard Shortcut Reference
Glossary of Terms
Index

Understanding projects


To start working in Audacity, you must open a project. By default, when you open Audacity for the very first time, it is a new project—and the screen looks noticeably blank. But before we start jumping into the details of project creation, it is important to understand what a project is.

A project is not the end-product or output from Audacity. It is actually a working draft of all of the work that you have done on the collection of files that you imported and used in the creation of a final file.

Project files, when saved in Audacity, are AUP files. AUP is the default file format when you choose File and then Save Project from the main menu.

Note

A project encompasses all of the clips and files that you have already imported into Audacity, the timing, silencing, and other editing that you have spent time to create. All of this, is stored in a way that Audacity recognizes. So the next time you open your AUP project file, it's all there, just the way you saved it.

If you were now to save the test sample recording that you made at the very beginning of this chapter, by selecting File and then Save Project from the main menu, then you would be prompted for a file name, and would notice that the file will be saved as an AUP file. You could then reopen this file, edit it some more, fade in the sound, cut or trim the clip, and then save your changes. The next time you open this file, all of those edits would still be applied.