Putting it Together
Exercise Three
For this exercise, you will be recording the text you read for exercise one again and editing it. The editing process will involve selecting the best takes of your reading, assembling them, and cleaning up the track from unwanted sounds like pops and clicks. Audacity's manual is thorough and easy to understand. I recommend looking it over and referencing it when you have technical questions.Step One:
Listen to the recording you did in exercise one and consider how you might improve its quality. Should you record in a different space? Can you use a different mic or put your mic in a more strategic place?
Step Two:
Rerecord your reading of the text while making more conscientious choices about your space and microphone. Read it at least twice. Don’t worry about saying it perfectly as this is just an exercise. When recording make sure to capture about fifteen seconds of room tone at the beginning (or at some point).
I recommend you record each take on a different track. Depending on your Audacity preference settings, it may or may not generate a new track when you begin a new recording. To create a track, go to Tracks in the menu bar and select Add New and Mono Track.
Step Four: Exporting Your File
Audacity is a destructive editing platform, meaning when you cut a sound clip, you cannot restore it like you can on non-destructive platforms like Garageband and iMovie. (There is an undo option, however.) For this reason, it is a good practice to export a copy of your files in case you make a mistake that you can't undo. Export each track individually (otherwise, it will mix them down into one audio file). To do this, highlight a track and go to File, Export, Export Selected Audio. Export them as WAV files, which is the highest quality.
Step Three: Assembling Your Sound
Here you will learn how to split, copy, and move audio clips. I will be mentioning keyboard shortcuts using Mac related commands. For PC shortcuts visit the Audacity manual.
Listen to all the recoding to identify the best takes. (Don't worry about it if the best takes are still rough. This is just for practice.)
Step Four: Adjusting the Timing and Clean Up
At this point, you are going to smooth out the sound by adding crossfades and in and out fades, adjusting the timing between the clips (the pacing of the reading), and cleaning up more difficult clicks and pops when possible.
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Step Five (optional): Improving Vocal Quality
Finally, if you would like, to experiment with effects that might improve the audio quality by following CasualSavage's "How To Improve Voice Quality in Audacity 2020" video. (CasualSavage has a number of helpful videos on Audacity and audio recording more broadly.) I recommend you create a new track and copy your sound clip so that you can compare the two clips.
Step Six: Exporting
Now that you are done, it’s time to export your audio.
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If you feel comfortable with it, share your audio file with me. I’d love to hear how it turned out and about your process.
To conclude, let's look at some other tools. iMovie is a video editing platform into which you can import audio exported from Audacity as well as being platform that can record and, to some extend, edit audio. Garageband is a non-destructive sound recording and editing platform that you might find appealing.
