Audacity Tutorial 3 of 25 - What are Audacity Tracks

Welcome to Tutorial 3 of 25 -  What are Audacity Tracks 

This video tutorial gives an overview of ‘tracks’ in Audacity. It is suggested that learners view the video tutorial in order to learn all about the features of Audacity tracks.

At the end of this post is a transcript of this video.

Learn Audacity Series

The following is a list of all the Audacity tutorials and activities found in this video series

TUTORIALS
1 How to Create a New Audacity Project

2 How to Open or Import Audio Files in Audacity

3 What are Audacity Tracks

4 Audacity Transport Controls

5 How to Save an Audacity Project

6 How to Record

7 How to Set Input Volume Levels

8 How to Export MP3 and WAV Files

9 How to Select and Delete Sound

ACTIVITY 1 - My First Recording

10 How to use Undo and History in Audacity

11 How to Use the Zoom Tools

12 How to Use the Time Shift Tool

13 How to Use the Change Pitch Effect

ACTIVITY 2 - Make Your Voice Sound Like a Chipmunk

14 How to Use the Fade In & Fade Out Effects

15 How to Download Sound Samples from the Internet

16 How to Use the Amplify Effect

17 How to Edit Metadata

18 How to Multitrack Record

19 How to Use a Click Track

ACTIVITY 3 - Multitrack Recording in Audacity - Beatbox

20 How to Make Silence

21 How to Use the Change Tempo Effect

22 How to Use the Equalization Effect

23 How to Reverse Sound

24 Stereo Mono

ACTIVITY 4 - How to Mess Up a Piece of Music

25 How to Remove Vocals from a Recording

SETUP TUTORIALS
SETUP 1 How to Install Audacity

SETUP 2 How to Configure Recording and Playback Hardware

SETUP 3 How to Install the LAME Encoder

PROJECTS 
PROJECT 1 - Create a Halloween Soundscape

PROJECT 2 - Interview a Superhero

PROJECT 3 - Create a Radio Play

 

Transcript

0:00:06

Hello sound editors. In this tutorial we will learn a little about tracks.

0:00:11

Tracks are important because that's at the heart of Audacity. That is where you do all your work.

0:00:15

It is where all the fun is.

0:00:16

Let's have a look.

0:00:18

A you can see here we have one track and it is called "Muscles."

0:00:23

It has two waveforms. The blue is the waveforms. You might be saying,

0:00:29

"Why does one track have two waveforms?"

0:00:33

Well, this is the stereo track

0:00:35

and stereo means that there's different sound in the left ear and different sound in the right ear.

0:00:42

That will be stereo. If the sound it was the same in both ears, exactly the same it will be mono.

0:00:49

A stereo track has two waveforms. A mono track looks like this.

0:00:56

It has one waveform.

0:00:58

So that is the difference. A mono track

0:01:00

would have exactly the same sound in the left ear

0:01:03

as in the right here. This is a stereo track.

0:01:10

If you look close at this waveform

0:01:13

you will see that there are peaks and valleys. I will zoom in here with Zoom tool.

0:01:17

If you have not watched the tutorial on how uses Zoom tools it is a good idea to watch that.

0:01:22

So you can see here we have peaks and valleys. The peaks are the loud parts and

0:01:26

valleys of the quiet parts. You can see there. The valleys is the skinny parts of the waveform. The really quiet sections.

0:01:35

Let's go back to the mono file again.

0:01:37

It is almost more dramatic here in the mono version.

0:01:44

You can see the valleys very narrow. That would be almost silent.

0:01:50

You can see that this would be silence over here - no sound at all.

0:01:54

The really loud sounds are the big thick parts of the waveform.

0:01:58

That is the waveform. Also if you think about a clap of thunder, it would probably look like...

0:02:06

It would have big waveform big squiggles when the thunder went, "Boom."

0:02:11

Then it would gradually tapered down to nothing as the waveform got more and more narrow.

0:02:18

Let's move on.

0:02:19

On the left hand side here there is a tab and on the tab is a lot of information about the track.

0:02:24

There is a pull-down at the very top.

0:02:26

Let's pull it down. You can see

0:02:29

there is the name at the top and this is where you can change the name. I will show you that a second.

0:02:33

There is other information here about the waveform.

0:02:36

We are not going to worry that that right now.

0:02:38

You can look at these things yourself if you like, but for this tutorial we are going to concentrate on the basics.

0:02:43

If we want to change the name of this track you click 'Name' right here.

0:02:48

Click it and you can see it is called "Muscles MP3 256K."

0:02:52

I am going to delete that name and I am going to put in "Fiddle" because this is a fiddle track.

0:02:57

And I am going to quick OK. Now look at that, our track is now called "Fiddle."

0:03:02

That is a really good thing to do especially if you have more than one track.

0:03:07

Because when you look at it, you may not recognize the waveform.

0:03:11

You may need to have a name to help you keep it organized.

0:03:15

The next thing, let's move down a little further. We have Mute and Solo.

0:03:20

Let's look at Mute first. If you think about your TV, Mute turns the sound off.

0:03:25

Mute will do the same thing for a track.

0:03:28

If you have multiple tracks and you want to turn the sound off in one of the

0:03:32

tracks, let's say it's a vocal track, and you want to hear the song without the vocals,

0:03:37

you would mute that track and you could hear the recording without it.

0:03:42

Same thing, Solo will let you hear only that track.

0:03:45

Let's say for example you recording a song you had a vocal track and you wanted to hear only the vocals

0:03:51

and no guitar, no drums no keyboard, you would click Solo

0:03:55

That will let you hear only that track.

0:03:58

Very useful when you do a multitrack recording.

0:04:01

Next thing. We have here a Gain slider. I am going to simplify. Gane is another word for volume.

0:04:11

If you want your volume to be a little louder slide the gain to the right.

0:04:15

If you want your volume to be a little quieter you slide you gain to the left.

0:04:19

So that is how you just the volume of your track.

0:04:23

Next slider is the Pan slider. Pan is exactly the same as balance.

0:04:29

If you think of your stereo, if you want to put more sound in the right ear you balance it to the right. If you

0:04:36

want to put more sound in the left ear you balance the left.

0:04:39

Pan is the sound engineering word for balance.

0:04:44

We do not say balance, we say pan. We can pan it to the left a certain percentage,

0:04:49

ninety percent or twenty or whatever you want.

0:04:51

You can pan to the right, same thing.

0:04:54

That will put that track more in the right ear or more in the left ear. That is pan.

0:04:59

The next thing I want to talk to you

about is

0:05:03

how to resize your track.

0:05:05

If you have a track that is taking up too much space you can grab the

0:05:08

bottom edge of the track and slide it up

0:05:11

or you could slide it down if you want to do some editing.

0:05:14

If you need to see the big thick waveform you can drag it down.

0:05:17

It doesn't affect the volume. It just affects the way it looks.

0:05:22

Also we have a little collapsed button here that will collapse the track and

0:05:26

make it tiny in case you have many tracks and need more room.

0:05:31

The last thing I want to talk about is this little x in the top left hand corner.

0:05:36

This is the Delete Track button.

0:05:39

If you have a track and it did not work out

0:05:42

just click this button, right here and presto, it is gone.

0:05:47

That is the delete button.

0:05:49

You can also go up to EDIT - UNDO

0:05:53

and you can undo that track remove.

0:05:56

If you want to know more about the UNDO feature

0:05:59

check out the tutorial on UNDO and HISTORY.

0:06:03

That is it for tracks. It is good to know this stuff because, like I said, we

0:06:06

spend most of our time working on tracks. That is where all the work is and, of course,

0:06:10

that is where all the fun is as well.

 

 

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