audacity: intro to sound editing
TRANSCRIPT
Audacity: Intro to Sound Editing
Instructors:Jesse Turnbull, Sarah Jacoby, David ToccafondiVitale Digital Media Lab
Vitale Digital Media [email protected]://wic.library.upenn.edu/lab
Lab Hours:Monday - Thursday: 9am - 10pmFriday: 9am - 9pmSaturday: 12 noon - 9pmSunday: 12 noon - 9pm
Scheduled Lab ClosingsWhen we know ahead of time that the lab will be closed for a class, we list it online athttp://wic.library.upenn.edu/lab/closings2.html
Reminder:Your feedback is really important to us. Please take a minute tocomplete the evaluation form and return it at the end of class
Course Objectives
This is an introduction to Audacity-a free, cross-platform audio editing program availableonline. In this class, we will go through the process of importing audio tracks intoAudacity and introduce the anatomy of a sound wav. From there, we'll learn how to editthe wav, manage multiple audio tracks, record your own voice, and export your veryown audio track.
This training is assumes no former knowledge of audio editing or the physics of sound.
In this course you will learn:How to record soundHow to edit sound wavsHow to import audio tracks from an outside sourceAbout multi-layered audio tracks and mixingAbout labeling and managing recorded materialAbout adding effects, de-noising audio recordings, and balancing stereo sound
The difference between MP3s, AIFFs, OGG Vorbis files and how to export themMore as time permits
Where can you use Audacity?Download the program for free at http://audacity.sourceforge.net/. Be sure to downloadthe LAME encoder located there as well.Use it for free in the Vitale Digital Media Lab or in the Weigle Information Commons
e Interface
AUDACITY SOUND EDITOR AND RECORDER INTRODUCTION
Some Handy Recording Tips
Prevent noise!
The best way to reduce noise in your recordings is to prevent it entering your
sound material at all. Here are some simple tips:
* Turn off your refrigerator and furnace/air conditioner during the recording
session.
* Watch out for telephones, cell phones, pagers, ticking clocks, lawnmowers,
etc.
* Avoid locating the recording session near airports, train tracks, fire stations,
noisy dorm halls etc.
* Hang blankets on the walls, to dampen a live room. Or record in a room
with wall-to-wall carpeting.
* If you can, record in a basement, to help isolate your session from outside
noise. You'll probably need to use the blanket-on-the-wall trick here,
since concrete walls make good sound reflectors.
* Record late at night to reduce traffic noise leaking in from outside. (It's up
to you to work this out with the neighbors.)
* Avoid fluorescent lighting and keep cell-phones a good distance away from
any equipment.
Get the desired signal as loud as possible (without clipping) into the microphone.
This allows you to reduce the gain, which will also reduce the low-level noise. The
further a microphone is away from the source, the more you have to amplify the
mic's input signal to get to a usable level. But, boosting the gain amplifies
everything, including background sounds and even the internal electrical noise of
the amplifier. Ideally, the microphone should be right on top of the source, with
the gain no higher than necessary to get peaks around -3dB. If you are doing
multi-track recording, record each individual track as loud as possible. Set the
final volume of each track during post-production mixdown.
SAVE YOUR WORK WHILE EDITING. SAVE YOUR WORK WHILE EDITING.
SAVE YOUR WORK WHILE EDITING. SAVE YOUR WORK WHILE EDITING.
SAVE YOUR WORK WHILE EDITING. SAVE YOUR WORK WHILE EDITING.
SAVE YOUR WORK WHILE EDITING. SAVE YOUR WORK WHILE EDITING.
SAVE YOUR WORK WHILE EDITING. SAVE YOUR WORK WHILE EDITING.
SAVE YOUR WORK WHILE EDITING. SAVE YOUR WORK WHILE EDITING.
SAVE YOUR WORK WHILE EDITING. SAVE YOUR WORK WHILE EDITING.
SAVE YOUR WORK WHILE EDITING. SAVE YOUR WORK WHILE EDITING.
Audacity homepage:http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Audacity WIKI:http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php?title=Audacity_Wiki_Home_Page
Audacity Forum:http://audacityteam.org/forum/
LAME MP3 ENCODER:http://lame.buanzo.com.ar/
Other Audio Software:
Ardour is a powerful digital audio workstation that runs on GNU/Linux.http://ardour.org/
CDex is a free CD ripper for Microsoft Windows.http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/
GramoFile is a free tool for capturing and cleaning recordings from vinyl records.http://www.opensourcepartners.nl/~costar/gramofile/
iEatBrainz is a tool that enables you to take songs that you've chosen in your iTunes Library, that have incorrect or missing meta information, and then uses the sound of each song to match it with the correct information maintained in the MusicBrainz Database (musicbrainz.org).http://sourceforge.net/projects/ieatbrainz/
More free software at SourceForge.net:
* Audio Editors * Audio Capture/Recording * Audio Analysis
Sourceforge.net is a shareware site. Find more audio editing software plus a whole lot more.
HELPFUL LINKS