[X4StringDrive]

Hope this little 3 part whoopdie doo can help someone step into recording a little easier. Very basic from downloading the program to simple recording.

Audacity Recording Part -1_How to.wmv
Audacity Recording Part-2_Lame.wmv
Audacity Recording Part -3_Recording Basics.wmv
Audacity Recording Part -4_Basic Editing.wmv
Audacity Recording Part -5_Adding Effects.wmv


The audacity home page can be found at - Audacity: Free Audio Editor and Recorder

Audacity: How do I download and install the LAME MP3 encoder?

[carol m]

That's really useful Les, thanks. OK I have to learn to be able to play in time - every time and all the time! Ha ha......but anyway, I have tried out that change tempo feature:

I wanted to increase the tempo of a 'piece' I was trying to record but I couldn't change chords fast enough (without flubs) so I recorded the melody line at the faster speed (single notes with pick), slowed it down and recorded the chords over it and changed it back to original speed. I thought I was being resourceful and creative, but Audacity didn't agree and gave me back a distorted and useless end product.

What do the Quick Mix and Align Tracks do? I was hoping they might be able to 'fudge' together my bad timing in some way. And if there are any software geeks out there, if you could invent such a program there is definitely a market and money to be made (10% to me for the idea - at least).

[Lcjones]

Which version of Audacity are you using? I don't have the Quick Mix option.

In the meantime, the Align Tool. Unless you are getting serious and literally doing second by second editing, the only Align tool you need is the Align To Zero tool. In order to use the ATZ tool, select EDIT and choose ALL to highlight all of your tracks. Then select PROJECT - ALIGN - ALIGN TO ZERO. Basically the ATZ tool synchronizes all the tracks to the same time line. I use the ATZ tool immediately BEFORE mixing it down.

**
LC

[carol m]

I have Audacity 1.2.4 and Quick mix is in the dropdown menu for 'Project' tab and the help menu says

"Quick Mix: This command mixes all of the selected tracks together. If you are mixing stereo tracks, or mixing tracks that are marked as Left or Right channel, the result will be a stereo track (two channels), otherwise the result will be mono.

Your tracks are implicitly mixed whenever you hit the Play button and whenever you export. The command offers a way to do it permanently and save the results to disk, saving on playback resources.

Note that if you try to mix two very loud tracks together, you may get clipping (it will sound like pops, clicks and noise). To avoid this, drag the gain slider on the tracks down to reduce their volume before mixing.

What do you mean by 'mixing it down' in your post?

[Tekker]

Originally Posted by carol m

What do you mean by 'mixing it down' in your post?

Mixing down means taking several tracks (say guitar, bass, and vocals) and mixing them together to create one track. In other words, you mix several tracks down to just one track.

I was hoping they might be able to 'fudge' together my bad timing in some way. And if there are any software geeks out there, if you could invent such a program there is definitely a market and money to be made (10% to me for the idea - at least).

It does exist, this feature is called Audio Quantize. But it is generally in recording programs that cost a bit of money.

In addition there is also software to automatically fix pitch such as Autotune, so anymore you don't even have to be a decent musician/singer to have an album.... Hence the difference between "studio" bands and "live" bands.

-tkr

[Lcjones]

Ah,,, maybe a twist of terminology.

Mixing..... is where you do your magic. Like the term, wet and dry tracks. A dry track is essentially an un-effected track while a wet track is a track that has had "effect" applied to it. Mixing is when you add effects, set panning, adjust volume or just leave it alone on a per track basis.

Mixing Down (QuickMix) or in the version 1.3.0 I use, Mix And Render.
Is when you put all your tracks together to make 1 file. Mixing down.
Of course, this is the LAST thing you do.

But, during the recording process, and this may help people with latency issues in Audacity, you can "pre-mix" tracks. What I mean by pre-mix is... for example: You may have an acoustic guitar recorded on one track and panned hard right. You may have another acoustic track that is panned hard left. But in the same recording session, you may have a bass track, a vocal track and a harmony track. In order to save space AND IF YOU ARE SATISFIED with your two acoustic guitar tracks, you can highlight both tracks, by holding the SHIFT KEY and clicking on each track. They both are now highlighted. Now you go to the PROJECT tool and do a QUICK MIX on just those two tracks. All other tracks are still in their natural state. Now you have one less track to deal with.

This process saves loads of space and resources on your computer. Plus simplifies things when you get 10,15 or a couple dozen tracks going at one time.

Hope this helps. Again, others more wise than I, have much more concise answers.

**
LC

[carol m]

Have I got this right? You record one drum or click track. Then you record a guitar track (under the click track) while listening to the click track and save it with Save Project As. Then you start a new Audacity window, use the same click track and record another guitar (or vocal) track by listening to the same click track and recording over it (under it actually). Then you save that as Save Project As with a different name or a,b,c,etc).

Then you repeat this process for as many tracks as you want and add effects etc to each track separately until you are happy with each track.

How do you then get all of your separately 'saved' tracks into one Audacity 'window' so you can highlight them and do a Quick Mix (or whatever you have with your Audacity version)? I have changed my Audacity settings so I hear the first recorded track (or tracks) while I record the next one (quite a breakthrough when I found out how to do that). It automatically 'mixes' or 'adds' each track every-time you go back to the beginning and press Play (or Record) because they are all in the same window (or Project). That obviously doesn't allow you to add effects to individual tracks so it's not a good option.

After you 'mix' all your tracks together, do you then listen carefully, decide if any tracks need to be 'brought up' or 'back' or changed in some way, go back to the separately saved individual track,do the changes and then mix them all again until you are happy with the finished song?

[carol m]

Tekker, thanks for the info. Autotune sounds OK as a last resort, but its not as much fun. I'll definitely keep it in mind though.

[Tekker]

Originally Posted by carol m

Have I got this right? You record one drum or click track. Then you record a guitar track (under the click track) while listening to the click track and save it with Save Project As. Then you start a new Audacity window, use the same click track and record another guitar (or vocal) track by listening to the same click track and recording over it (under it actually). Then you save that as Save Project As with a different name or a,b,c,etc).

Then you repeat this process for as many tracks as you want and add effects etc to each track separately until you are happy with each track.

Each instrument is recorded into the same project but on a different track. So for instance you could have:

Track 1: Click track (or Drums)
Track 2: Guitar
Track 3: Keyboards
Track 4: Vocals
Track 5: Background Vocals
Etc....

You can choose which tracks you hear while recording by muting tracks. So for example if you only want to hear the click track and guitar while recording vocals, you can simply press mute on the keyboard track while recording your vocals.

As you record your new tracks they are automatically recorded in sync with the previous tracks.

I have changed my Audacity settings so I hear the first recorded track (or tracks) while I record the next one (quite a breakthrough when I found out how to do that). It automatically 'mixes' or 'adds' each track every-time you go back to the beginning and press Play (or Record) because they are all in the same window (or Project). That obviously doesn't allow you to add effects to individual tracks so it's not a good option.

Check your soundcard settings in your mixer window. (I think you've said you read my tutorial on this, but just in case here it is again. )

What you are describing happens if you have "record what you hear", or "stereo mixer" (or something like this, depending on your brand of soundcard) selected for recording. This will record ALL sounds going through your computer instead of just the mic (or line) input.

-tkr

[carol m]

Thanks Tekker I'll check it out. The mute 'button'....of course, I wondered why you would want that - magic.

In fact 'Phil Spectre.......Eat My Dust!'

[carol m]

Just a point Tekker, you say
'As you record your new tracks they are automatically recorded in sync with the previous tracks'.

Does this mean its 'automatically in synch' etc only if you start at exactly the same point and play accurately in time with the click track right through?

I've worked out that if you start a bit late or early (say on a different beat) you can line it up by deleting left from the first note in whichever track starts 'late' up to where the first (or earliest) track starts.

As for the playing in exact rhythm and timing to the click track, I can tell you that, for me anyway, there is nothing 'automatic' about that.

[carol m]

Kenny has just reminded me of this excellent thread. There is much here that I 'missed' first time through, and some things I'm still not sure of.

When you say "Mixing down to a single track", do you mean what automatically happens when you convert the whole project into a single mp3, or do you highlight all the separate tracks that you want to include in the final mix, Quickmix and then convert it to mp3? And does it make a difference?

Also, in making a loop from a 4sec drum track, for example, as Les referred to above, how is that done? I tried looping 4 bars of my playing by highlight/copy/paste onto the end of the first track a few times, and it did work after a fashion, but you couldn't possibly do that with a 4 second sample x 80 to get about 3mins or so of track?

[Tekker]

Originally Posted by carol m

Just a point Tekker, you say
'As you record your new tracks they are automatically recorded in sync with the previous tracks'.

Does this mean its 'automatically in synch' etc only if you start at exactly the same point and play accurately in time with the click track right through?

Sorry missed this one before, but yes that's exactly what it means.

When you say "Mixing down to a single track", do you mean what automatically happens when you convert the whole project into a single mp3

Yes, mixing down to a single track just means combining multiple tracks (say a separate guitar track and vocal track) into one track (with guitar and vocals together). It doesn't matter if the file is an mp3 or a wave, they are still combined into "one" file.

or do you highlight all the separate tracks that you want to include in the final mix, Quickmix and then convert it to mp3? And does it make a difference?

Either way will work. If you can convert to mp3 directly, then that'll save you a step from having to go to wave and then to mp3.

but you couldn't possibly do that with a 4 second sample x 80 to get about 3mins or so of track?

Yep, you sure could.

-tkr

[jimmyzowens]

it wont let me download lame mps

[Lcjones]

Originally Posted by jimmyzowens

it wont let me download lame mps

Do you mean the LameDLL encoding library so that Audacity will convert to MP3's?

If you're running a PC, you can get the Lame Lib here.

**
LC