If we click the play button, Audacity will move from left to right over the sound, with a vertical line representing our currrent point in the clip. The beginning of the sound occurs at the far left of the interface, and Audacity ticks off periodic time markers as the wave continues to the right. The x-axis represents time as seconds (or minutes and seconds, depending on the length of the clip). The interface will change to reflect the loaded data:Īudacity converts your sound into a waveform, a commonly used mode for representing sound. To begin, open the Bach recording you just downloaded by using the Audacity File menu. Audacity can be used on Mac OSX, Windows, or Linux.ĭownload the program and double-click to install.

Next, download and install Audacity, which is available on the project site. To download, right click here and select ‘Save Link As’ to download the file onto your computer as an MP3.

You will need the mp3 file of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. This tutorial uses Audacity 2.1.2, released January 2016. Sound editing platforms are often expensive and offer extensive capabilities that can be overwhelming to the first-time user, but Audacity is a free and open source alternative that offers powerful capabilities for sound editing with a low barrier for entry.įor this lesson we will work with two audio files: a recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations and another recording of your own voice that will be made in the course of the lesson. In this lesson you will learn how to use Audacity to load, record, edit, mix, and export audio files. That guest lecture taking place in your department? Record it and edit it yourself! Doing so is a lightweight way to distribute resources among various institutions, and it also helps make the materials more accessible for readers and listeners with a wide variety of learning needs. On a more practical level, these skills could also allow you to record and package recordings of yourself or others for distribution. Being able to handle and manipulate the materials can help you take control of your object of study: you can zoom in and extract particular moments to analyze, process the audio, and upload the materials to a server to compliment a blog post on the topic. For those interested in audio, basic sound editing skills go a long way.

Edit vocals in audacity