This tutorial has been created to help educators and CSME collaborators navigate the computer application “Audacity” to facilitate the creation of podcasts, and the implementation thereof in the classroom.

Using Audacity

This is the Audacity application window. Please take note of the tools and controls available to you.

Pause,Play,Stop,Back,Forward,Record

Selection Tool Envelop Tool

Time Shift Tool

Microphone Designation/Input Source

Zoom

To Begin, press record, and begin speaking. e.g. “This is a test podcast.”If you make a mistake, continue recording. It will be easier to edit out the mistake later. You may wish to have a clock in sight for this purpose when you make an actual podcast.

If your computer does not have a built-in microphone, connect microphone, or device which has one, and select the microphone from the drop-down menu here.

Press stop when you are finished.

When you press stop, an audio track will appear like so.

Click X to close without saving.

Using the Selection tool, you may select any portion of your recording to apply effects to, or to delete any mistakes. The Background around the selected portion of an audio track will appear darker than the rest of the track.

Using the zoom tool we can zoom in and out of our sound wave for more accurate editing. Here we have zoomed in three times. Left clicking on the wave, with the zoom tool selected, will zoom in on the wave where you click it. Right clicking will zoom out.

To adjust the volume of the entire recording, for those who are soft spoken, select “Effects” from the application menu bar and “Amplify” from the drop-down menu.

After selecting “Amplify”, this dialogue box will appear.The slider allows the user to adjust the volume of therecording up or down (louder or softer.

Adding a Second Track:

This slide features a second music track which we wish to incorporate into the podcast. The music here was recorded, though you may choose to import from another source. Be certain that you have permission to use any copyright content from the copyright holder.

Select the Time Shift tool to move content in any track simply by dragging it backward or forward along the time indicator.

Here the top track has been offset by the length of the music track.

Here, a portion on the bottom track has been selected using the selection tool.

Many simple effects can be applied to selections. This user is applying a “fade out” effect to the music track.

Here the The Effect has been applied. At this point the user may wish to simply copy and paste the second track into the first and delete the second thereby creating one continuous track.

Here the Time Shift tool has once again been applied to create an overlap between the speaker’s voice and the second track.

Here, the overlapping portions of both tracks have been selected by the user by selecting the overlapping portion of the first track, and then the overlapping part of the second while holding down the shift key. Note that the software makes this easy by providing indicator lines.

To combine tracks, this user is selecting “Mix and Render” from the “tracks menu. This will “Mix” the selected portions of the tracks, and re render the audio wave as one track.

Here the the sound wave has been re-rendered into one seamless track.

Here the user has elected to trim down the track by selecting the opening silence. Note: Trimming out unnecessary silence keeps your file sizes smaller.

By Pressing delete or backspace, the unnecessary or unwanted audio content has been removed.

To save your files select “Export” from the “File” drop-down menu.

Name your file here.

Select a save location where you will be able to find your file easily.

Select MP3 File format from drop down menu for maximum compatibility.

Input your file’s Metadata in this window. (Appears after previous window.)Write this data down. You will need to match it EXACTLY later.

After you have exported your sound file, it is saved. When you quit the application, it will ask you if you want to save your work. Saving now will create a redundant copy of your work. Check in your file browser to make sure that your work did save, then select “No” in this window

when closing out of Audacity.

That’s it! You’re done. Hopefully we have helped you to create the media portion of your first

podcast. To create an accompanying XML file (required to publish your podcast), please view

our Poderator tutorial. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the CSME for

assistance.

Happy Podcasting!