In Part I we learned how to get the audio into the computer. Now we will expand upon that using Audacity, an Open Source audio editor. We will examine four different situations and how to correct them – Silence or unwanted noise at the beginning and end of a song, Multiple songs in one large audio file, and Continuous DJ style mixes where there is no clear beginning or end.
First things first, download Audacity and install it.
Now, let’s begin:
Situation 1: Silence or unwanted noise before the song begins.
- Open the audio file in Audacity.
- Choose the Selection tool
- Find the beginning of the song by clicking towards the left. (The beginning of the track)
-Press Play and listen. Take note of where the cursor is when the music begins.
-Press Stop when it begins.
-Zoom in a bit using the zoom tool
- Listen again and refine where the song begins.
- Continue zooming in more and more until you can see the exact point where the song begins.
- If you get confused of lost, Zoom out and try again.
- When you know where the song exactly begins click right at that point and bring the cursor there.
- Hold down Shift and select some of the area to the left of that point.
- Zoom out a little
- Hold down shift again and click to the left of the point – you just added this area to the original selection.
- Continue zooming out and repeat this process until everything from the beginning of the file to the beginning of the song is selected.
Note: If you do not hold shift when you make the selection you will lose your selection point and have to do everything over again.
- Delete this area.
- The song should start right up as soon as you press Play.
- Save your song
Note:Audacity uses a special file format. In order to save files in a way that we can use later, we Export them as a .WAV or .AIFF file.
Situation 2: Silence or unwanted sound after the song ends: Page 2