Recording your Voice Tutorials 3 - Basic Uses of Audacity ... · Recording your Voice Tutorials 3 - Basic Uses of Audacity Wayne B. Dickerson In this tutorial, you are going to learn

1© 2006, Wayne B. Dickerson

Recording your Voice Tutorials3 - Basic Uses of Audacity

Wayne B. Dickerson

In this tutorial, you are going to learnhow to use Audacity to perform some basicfunctions, namely, to record, edit, save andtransmit your audio assignments.

Remember: This tutorial will move alongautomatically. However, if you want topause, or go back a slide, or move forwardor resume playing, just right-click yourmouse on the screen for these options. Toreturn to the main menu, just press theEscape key.

Now that you’ve installed Audacity andset the computer and Audacity to make thebest possible recordings, you are ready tostart doing your assignments. The first thingwe need to do is make a few samplerecordings to check how the computer andAudacity are working together. Then we willdemonstrate how to add one, two, three, ormore separate recordings to the same soundfile. This is important because you will savethe various recordings you make overseveral days in single digital file, and you willsubmit this single file to your instructor whenit is time. Next we will talk about editing ourrecordings: We rarely make perfectrecordings the first time. Sometimes we haveto stop to correct things, or we have topause to practice some more or to let a noisyairplane go by. Finally, we offer some adviceon how to submit your digital file to yourinstructor.

In your course syllabus, your firstassignment will look something like this.

Notice the word Orange inparentheses after the assignment. If youwere using cassette tapes for yourrecording assignments, you wouldchoose the tape with the orange label.


Each new recording assignment, labeledOrange, would go on the same orangetape until it is time to turn in the orangecassette.

When the time comes to turn in theorange cassette, you will see this noticeon the syllabus. It shows all therecordings that should be on the sameorange cassette.

Similarly, when you make digitalrecordings, the filename of your firstrecording will be Orange 1. You will putinto this same audio file all therecordings that show the word Orangeafter the assignment. When it is time foryou to turn in your Orange 1 soundrecordings, you will submit your Orange1 audio file instead of turning in acassette tape.

Now let’s move along to the task ofmaking sample recordings to be sureeverything is working well. First, try tofind a quiet environment in which torecord; microphones pick upEVERYTHING! Then, when you areready, bring your microphone to withinan inch or two of your mouth for optimalclarity.


To make your first sample recording,start with the microphone volume sliderabout two-thirds of the way to maximum,as noted by the red arrow. Then click thered Record button to start recording.You can click the yellow Stop buttonwhen you’re finished. Or if you hit thespace bar, that will also stop therecording.

Your first recording will be simple. Beginby saying, “This is orange recording number1.” Then click the yellow Stop button to stop.When you click Stop, or hit the spacebar,Audacity will put the wave form of yourrecording on the screen in a single track.

To listen to your recording, you canpress the green Play button, or you can justpress the spacebar once again.

(Bottom slide) Now, let’s take a momentto analyze this test recording. You can listento the recording to see that you haveactually recorded sound. But listening is notthe best way to tell if you have a goodrecording. A better test is to look at the sizeof the sound waves. Ideally, the up anddown spikes of the sound waves should be +or - 5 or greater but not SO much greaterthat the spikes are cut off at top and bottom– that would be distortion. With this kind ofrecording, the listener should not have toturn up the volume past the mid-point. Evenwith your playback volume half-way up, youwill still have a sound that is easy to hear.

In this recording, the waves peakslightly above +5 and below -5. So therecording is pretty good. If the computersettings and Audacity settings are correct,the microphone volume slider could bemoved a little more to the right to improvethis recording somewhat.


If you did that, the result might look likethis. And this would be even better.

Of course, if you moved the volumeslider too much, you might distort therecording. The peaks go off the scale onthe top and bottom. The audio quality willsound bad. In this case, the volumeslider should be moved to the left toimprove this recording.

So if you get this kind of results, youwould want to delete it. Simply click onthe X in the upper left corner of the trackand try again.


On the other hand, instead of volumethat is too high, you might see this result:

The volume in this recording is too lowto allow comfortable listening. It cannot beimproved by using the microphone volumeslider. Instead, we should check to see thatthe computer was set to MicrophoneBoost. If the boost was not selected, itshould be. If it was selected, then thespeaker’s mouth was likely too far from themicrophone. One inch or so away is aboutright. Delete this file by clicking on the X, too.

These examples should help you judgethe audio quality of your recording. If you donot change the settings, they should stayselected from one recording to the next.

If they have changed, remember tolook at the wave form you are recordingto be sure you are getting the bestquality. If it’s too high, decrease it usingthe microphone volume slider. If it’sslightly low, you can try to move theslider to the right. But if it is very low,remember to check the MicrophoneBoost and to narrow the distancebetween your mouth and the mic.

After you have run your test, youshould end up with a recorded title foryour file, “This is orange recordingnumber 1.”

Now that you have a good recording,it is time to save your file. Under File,click on Save Project As... Give your filethe name of Orange1, choose adirectory where you will save it, and thenclick Save. The file is saved with the.aup extension, Audacity Project.


You are now ready to make anotherrecording on the same file. Yourassignment is to record General Script A- Open O Words. Notice that there is thereminder to record each word twice. Theobjective is to record this assignment sothat it comes immediately after the title,“This is orange recording number 1.”

So find your General Script A -Open OWords list. It is a page you downloadfrom the class web. It looks like this:

In Audacity, open Orange1.aup if it isnot already open. Your next recording willnot appear on the same track as “This isorange recording number 1.” Instead yoursecond recording will appear on a secondtrack below the first recording. To be surethat the recordings do not overlap in time,take your cursor and click at the end of thefirst recording. Your cursor will turn into ahand when you click, and a vertical blackline will appear at the end of the recording.

Then proceed to record General ScriptA - Open O Words, starting with the name ofthe handout, the title of the section, then sayeach word twice.


When you end, you click on the YellowStop button or simply hit the spacebar.Your Audacity screen will look like this:

If you happen to forget to click yourcursor at the end of the previousrecording, your new recording will end upwherever your cursor was. If your cursorhappened to be somewhere in your firstrecording, your second recording will endup under the first recording. That is, it willoverlap in time and be unintelligiblegibberish when played.

(Bottom slide) This is not a seriousproblem because you can easily fix it. Go upto the top lefthand corner of Audacity andclick on the two-headed arrow. This is theTime Shift Tool. When you click and holddown the left mouse button on the track that’sout-of-place, you can drag the whole track tothe position it should be in. Once it is in theright place, return to the upper lefthand cornerof Audacity and click on the standard I-beamcursor to return to normal.

After this, you can continue to addrecordings every day in the same way untilyou complete all of the orange taperecordings. There is no practical limit to thenumber separate mono tracks you can addto a single file. I’ve recorded more than 25tracks on a single file with no problem at all.


(No audio during the movie)

Now, let’s deal with one of therealities of recording. The reality is thatwe rarely make a recording from start tofinish without having to stop and correctsome mistake, start over, or simplypause to do covert rehearsal or to findthe next pages, or because we areinterrupted. Stopping to correct andpausing are two different functions youshould know about.

Let’s say you make a mistake andyou need to start over and redo thewhole track. There is nothing simpler.After you stop recording, just click the Xin the upper lefthand corner of the trackto remove the entire track. You are nowready to re-record the track.


But sometimes you make a mistake andneed to repair just that error. In this case,you stop recording and go back to listen tothe recording. You click on the track aboutwhere you think the error is. The cursorturns into a hand and a thin black verticalline appears across the recording to markyour starting point temporarily. From thatpoint, you can now hold the left mousebutton down and drag across the recordingto the right, to the point where you haveincluded the mistake.

Press the spacebar or click the Playbutton to listen to what you have highlighted.

If you started too early or too late orwent too far or not far enough inhighlighting the recording, you bring yourhand cursor to the left edge of thehighlighting and drag that edge to theright or to the left. Or you can bring thecursor to the right edge and drag thatedge to the right or to the left...until youhave highlighted the error.

Now you have two choices. You can cutout the mistake by pressing the Cut button.The effect is to remove the mistake andbring the left and right edges together,closing the gap. This may be exactly whatyou want to do. For example if you made amistake and immediately recorded acorrection without stopping, then you wouldgo back and remove the mistake, closingthe gap and leaving the correction.

But if you want to leave a space wherethe mistake came out, so you can replacethe mistake with a correct version that youwill record, then you should press theSilence Selection button.


The Silence Selection button will leavesilence in your recording the samelength as what you cut out.

With the error cut out, the next task willbe to record the correct word or phrase onthe next track and insert it into the gap.Here’s how we do it. First, click with yourcursor at the left side of the silent gap andthen make your recording. The repairappears on the track below. As we will see,it does not have to be the same size as thegap above. Next highlight the repair and cutit out of the lower track. In the upper track,be sure to highlight the silence and then usethe Paste button to insert your repair intothe silence. Your repair will fit perfectly intothe gap. Finally remove the repair track byclicking on the X in the upper left corner ofthat track.

(No audio during the movie)


In summary, there are several ways tofix a recording you are not happy with. Youcan, of course, start over by deleting thetrack with the error and beginning again.Alternatively, if you have recorded a repairimmediately after making an error, you canfind and remove the error with the Cutbutton. If you made a mistake and thenstopped to make a repair, you would find theerror and remove it with the SilenceSelection button, leaving a gap in yourrecording. To make your repair, start byclicking on the left side of the gap, thenrecord your patch. Next, cut out the patch,highlight the gap, then paste the repair intothe gap.

Now, what if you needed to pauseyour recording for a moment, forexample to practice some more, or toanswer the phone, or handle anotherinterruption? You do not need to stoprecording. Instead you could press thePause button. When you are ready toresume recording, you can press thePause button again. You can do this asmany times as you need to.

Finally, how do you save your Orange1file to turn in? The process is calledEXPORTING. You will find the Exportcommand under File. You will export youraudio file in an MP3 format because MP3gives high quality results with a small filesize. Audacity will tell you that the exportingfunction will mix all your separate tracks intoa single track. That’s why it is so importantto start each new track where the previoustrack ends. Click on OK. When you areasked to give the file a name, call itOrange1 to match your assignment nameand add your initials to the file name. Thensave your audio file to a folder on your harddrive where you keep such course files.

In this example, student WBD issubmitting the Orange 1 assignment. So thefilename reads Orange1-WBD. The color


(continued) name - Orange - the number - 1- and your initials will help you and yourinstructor keep track of your assignments.Later on, there will be a Blue 2 sound file, anOrange 3 sound file, and Blue 4 sound file,and so on.

(Top slide) When it is time to turn inyour assignment, your instructor will giveyou a ticket to the instructor’s drop box. Theticket is simply a URL which will open afolder in the instructor’s NetFiles into whichyou can upload your assignment. You willuse this same ticket throughout thesemester. So keep it safe!

When you paste the ticket into yourWeb browser, it will take you directly to thedrop box where you will see an Uploadbutton.

(Middle slide) When you click on theUpload button, you can browse yourcomputer to find the folder where youhave stored your Orange 1 recording.When you have found the file, click OKto upload.

Your sound file will be transferred toyour instructor’s drop box, and you willsee a message that the upload wassuccessful. That’s all there is to it!


There are other useful features inAudacity. But these basics - forrecording, editing, and transmitting youraudio files - are sufficient for you to do agood job with your recordingassignments..and have fun usingAudacity!

Total run time: 19:20 min

Documents

Recording your Voice Tutorials 3 - Basic Uses of Audacity ... · Recording your Voice Tutorials 3 - Basic Uses of Audacity Wayne B. Dickerson In this tutorial, you are going to learn