Audacity Tutorials - How to use Audacity - Part 4 - Recording
In this Audacity tutorial, we discuss how to create your first Audacity sound recording.
So, we will start by opening Audacity. When the Audacity program opens, the first thing to do is, go to Edit > Preferences and check out for inputs and outputs. So, under Preferences, go to Audio I/O, where you will confirm the Playback Device. In this example Microsoft Sound Mapper is used. Now, go down and check on your microphone. If you don’t see it highlighted, just find it in the dropdown menu and then the number of channels you want to record. To change things up, select Stereo from the drop down in Channels. Also, there are options of ‘Playing other tracks while recording new ones’. So, if you are recording onto something that already has an audio on it, you can hear playback. This could be good if you are doing voice over or dialogue replacement. So, if you are replacing the existing audio, you may want to click on this, again, it’s a personal preference. And the Software Playthrough, which allows you to play through a new track while recording.
You also want to double check the quality. Make sure you are recording at the sample rate you want to, and the format, which we ran through in the Quality chapter. Now click OK. So now, why don’t we record? When you are ready, go ahead and click the Record button and you will start recording. Here we can see our levels up here (Input meter on the top right hand corner) and we can see our recordings here (Blue waving line that tracks the recording).
Couple of notes here are:
(i) Do all your recordings in a single session. Keep recording all your voice and then go back and edit. Because, your voice will change over a period of time.
(ii) Have a good recording environment. Do not need an equi chamber and do not worry about minor flaws, which you will be able to go back and edit those in Audacity.
To stop recording, click on the Stop button. Another quick trick is, eucalyptus or menthol is good for opening up nasal and vocal passages.
Now, to go back and take a lesson, click on the Skip to Start button, and then click on Play. Now you start recording. Here we can see our levels up here (Input meter on the top right hand corner) and we can see our recordings here (Blue waving line that tracks the recording). Now click Stop to stop the playback.
There are number of things you can do with these Audio Tracks. If you don’t like to go on record, you click right here and then go back and re-record. So, here we are recording again the same tracks. So, lets say for instance, you want to keep these tracks and then record some more. So, press Stop here and then click Record to get a new set of tracks down below here. So, it is not getting recorded over the previous tracks, but we get a new set of tracks. So, Stop these.
Let’s say we are happy with these two sets of recordings. Now what we do is to name them. Go to Audio Tracks > Name, change the track name to Example and click OK. Now we can see Example in the track name. So, once again we are going to name things in the way that makes sense to us. Go down here and name this as Example 2 and click OK. So, you see how this could be a very handy tool for naming all the tracks, especially, when you start dealing with multiple tracks, and also know how to record on two tracks, since in Preferences we set up stereo. If you just want to record on one track, you go back to Preferences > Audio I/O, change channels to 1, and click OK. And now when we go back to record, we are just recording on a single track. Now, we’re just having a single track down here. Now going back up to drop-down menu on the track name, we can move the tracks up or down. So now, go to example -> Move Track Up, and we can see this track moved up. It’s always handy to have whatever track you are working on, to be at the top.
You can also analyze recording by Wave Form decibels (Go To example2 -> Waveform (db)) and by Spectrum (Go To example2 -> Spectrum), where different colors represents different frequencies. Pitch (EAC) (example2 -> Pitch (EAC)) could not be seen much in this situation. So, we can split the stereo tracks (Go to example2 -> Split Stereo Track) and now we can work on them independently. While doing that, if you want to rename, Go to Audio Track -> Name, make this example2 to example2 right and click OK. You can also change the assignment of the channels, making it a Mono, left channel or right channel and again, we are going to adjust the format with the rate. And that’s how you record in Audacity.
