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In this Audacity tutorial, we will review the basic setups and the control panel for Audacity sound and recording editor.

So, to start, double click on the shortcut icon “Audacity”. If you don’t have shortcut icon, go to Programs and open it up that way. Here we have the beginning Audacity window.

First thing we see are the main buttons. |<<| is for rewinding to the beginning, |> is for Play, O for recording, || for Pausing, Square button for stopping and |>>| for skipping to the end.

Let’s start by recording something. Click on Record button, start recording something and then stop it after some time, once recorded. We could see our recording track now (Blue Waving line). Now, we have something to work with. As you saw up here (Two Meter toolbars on the top right hand corner of the Audacity window) these are the video meters or the level meters. The one on the top right hand corner are for the inputs and the one previous to it are for the outputs. So, let’s skip to the beginning and Play again. We can see it leveled up on the top.

Now, we have something to play with. Let’s go through the controls.

Let’s start with top tool bar.

In File Menu, under File:
(i)    New or Ctrl+N (Hot Key) => To open new file
(ii)    Open or Ctrl+O => To open an existing file
(iii)    Close or Ctrl+W => To close the file
(iv)    Save or Ctrl+S => To save a project.

Try to save the project now by hitting Save. While saving the project, we get the first warning from Audacity. The page clearly says everything is saved as we see it on the page here. To Export it, we have to do a separate step. Click on Don’t show this warning again and click OK. A new window opens now, asking about the location to save and the file name. In this instance, the file is saved in the Audacity folder, where a new folder is created with name ‘Example’ and file name also as ‘Example 1’. Click open on the folder and save the file. As said, it’s always important to remember where you save the files. Try to use a lot of folder to separate up things as much as possible and give file names that makes sense to you.

Here we see now, we are working on file ’Example 1’. Going back to the toolbar, tip recommended is, each time you work on a new project, save the project as a new file. It doesn’t take up that much space, and if you want to go back to previous version, which you might want to do in your last editing session, you can always go back to it. So, it’s a great way to keep track of your changes and allows you to go back to previous versions, just case if you don’t like something you did.

Next up we have “Recent Files”. Right now, we have just one file (Example1.aup). But any file you have recently worked on will list here. Here we see, various ways to Export—Export as WAV, MP3, Ogg Vorbis or Multiple Exports. We go for Exports in another chapter.

File > Page Setup is for printing and you can print through File > Print and File > Exit if you want to Exit the program.

Next we have the Edit Menu.

Edit > Undo Record Ctrl+Z  => To undo the last action. The last thing we did was record that voice over. So, we could undo the recording. If you make an editing you don’t like, then click on Ctrl+Z and undo it. Or, if you have a recording you don’t like, click on Ctrl Z and you can erase it now.

Just like other software functions, the light grey means you can’t access these functions, and that’s because we don’t have anything highlighted. So let’s go back and highlight a portion of our recording (the blue wave line). Now, go back to Edit and now we can Cut or Copy and once copied we can Paste. But right now, its light grey because we haven’t done that yet. You can Trim it, Delete it, Silence it, Split it or Duplicate it. In the later chapters, we will be going through all these functions.

This is the Select Function. To select the entire recording, click on Edit > Select > All or Ctrl+A. Now you see the whole piece is highlighted. To check out the other functions in Edit > Select, Go back to the recording and click on the middle somewhere. Now go back to check out the next two.

Edit > Select > Start to Cursor. Since it was clicked in the middle, we could see it highlighted from the start to the cursor. Now, reset the cursor, and select Edit > Select > Cursor to End, which will get it highlighted from the cursor to the end.

Next we have View Menu:

Under View, You can Zoom in, Normal Zoom or Zoom Out. That’s all in the selection here. So, we can take a quick look here on the recording. You can see how it’s Zooming in and the timeline appears changed. Now, click View > Zoom Out and 3.0 seconds over there could be seen.

Going back to View > click on Fit Window, the entire recorded piece will fit in the window here. Now, we can View > Zoom in to the selection. We are working on it. We are working on something with Video. Pal frames are here, we can go to minutes or seconds (in View > Set selection Frame) and we can go to more of this later.

Going back to View, we can float the Control bar (through View > Float Control bar), which separates the control bar here from our Audacity frame.

Going back to View > Dock the Control bar, which pushes the control bar back in the frame, which was moved up. On View, we can Float the Mixer or Meter as well (through View > Float Mixer toolbar / Float Meter toolbar).

Moving over to Project Menu:

View > Import Audio => To import audio

View > Import Raw Date => To import Raw Data.

Again we can go through all these in the later chapter.

View > New Audio Tracks => For adding tracks, and

View > Remove Tracks => For removing tracks.

Moving onto Generate Menu:

We have Silence, Tone or White Noise under Generate, which we can go through in later chapter.

Under Effects Menu we have different effects.

Analyze Menu for analyzing the audio, and,

Help Menu, if you have questions about something.

On the selection board under the Menu toolbar,

I => It is the selector.

Next button is for Envelope Editing, which is just to amplitude.

Pencil => It is the drawing tool.

Magnifying Lens => Another way to zoom in.

<-> => For Time Shifting, which allows you to move the tracks in the time. And, finally,

>|< => Is for Multi Tool Mode.

Again, we can go through all of these in later chapters.

The icon down the Selection board is your speaker control, Volume, and your micro phone volume.

Now, let’s review the shortcut buttons under the level meters:

Scissors icon => For Cutting (Same as selecting cut under Edit menu).

Next buttons are for Copy, Paste, Trimming and Silencing. If you have a pop or something, click on silencing to eliminate the pop.

Next buttons after silencing are, Undo for undoing an action and Redo for redoing an action. Then comes, Zooming In, Zooming Out, Fit selection to the window and Fit the project into the window. So, click on Fit the project into the window and now we see our recording fits to the window frame.

That’s the basics to the control panel.