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

Downmixing and rendering


All of the steps that we've done previously are the start to performing a mix. Now we can downmix. Downmixing is the process of combining many tracks of different types of audio and making it into a single recording. Like the previous examples, we are mixing speech with background music, other audio, and sound effects. You could even add instruments.

Just remember that when you export as one audio file format—in this case, it has been mixed—you won't be able to "break" apart the pieces anymore. This is why we recommend that you keep your Audacity project files!

We explained the export process in Chapter 6, Saving Projects and Exporting Podcasts, but the process is given in short here, so that you can make a mix of your new podcast, with all its additional features.

  1. With your project window open, from the main menu, select File and then Export.

    The Edit Metadata window is displayed.

  2. Enter tagging information by clicking in the Value field of any of the Tag fields and...