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Using Audacity to Record a Podcast In this exercise you will use Audacity to: 1. Record a podcast narrative using a microphone 2. Prepare an introduction and close music clip. 3. Prepare a background music file. 4. Prepare the multiple audio files for integration. 5. Combine and save the audio files for your podcast presentation. 6. Combine and save files in mp3 format for podcasting. 7. Combine 2 stereo tracks as a single mono track
1. Record a podcast narrative using a microphone 1.1 Press the RECORD button and read your narrative 1.2 Press the stop button when complete 1.3 Play the recording and use the SELECTION tool to remove unwanted pieces of audio. 1.4 If necessary use the ENVELOPE tool to increase or decrease the sound level or the GAIN SLIDE at the left of the audio profile. 1.5 Select the SAVE PROJECT option and save your original recording before modifications are made. This will enable you to recover the original file.
2. Prepare an introduction and close music clip. 2.1 Select PROJECT and IMPORT AUDIO to upload your introduction and close music clip. (use Sounddogs.com as a source for clips) 2.2 Note the 2 audio file profiles. Select MUTE and silence the narrative file. 2.3 Play and review the intro/close clip. Use the SELECTION tool to highlight a section at the beginning of the clip to fade…..use EFFECTS and FADE IN to fade the introduction. Repeat these steps to fade out a section at the end of the clip. 2.4 Save your project.
3. Prepare a background music clip & save stereo tracks as mono
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3.1 Select PROJECT and IMPORT AUDIO to upload your narrative’s background music. (a source for podsafe background music is http://www.podcastingnews.com/topics/Podcast-Legal_Music.html 3.2 Note that your background music has stereo tracks that should be combined as a mono track. 3.3 Activate the audio file’s pull down menu and select SPLIT STEREO TRACK 3.4 For each stereo track use its pull down menu to select MONO 3.5 Hold the Shift key down and select both of the stereo tracks……then select the PROJECT menu and then the QUICK MIX option which combines the two stereo tracks into a single mono track.
4. Prepare the multiple audio files for integration. You now have a number of audio files. Note the sample rates (44100hz, 8000hz, 11025hz,etc.) for your audio files. If there is a difference in the sample rates then: 4.1 Go to the bottom left corner of the screen to the PROJECT RATE box and confirm or change the sample rate for your files e.g. 44100. 4.2 Select FILE and then EXPORT MULTIPLE. Set the Export File to WAV and a location for the files and export the files. 4.3 Save your project and then close all files in Audacity 4.4 Select PROJECT and then IMPORT AUDIO to reload your files into Audacity.
5. Combine and save the audio files for your podcast presentation.. 5.1 Use the SELECTION tool to copy your intro/close music clip and paste it to the beginning and the end of your narrative’s audio file. 5.2 Use the SELECTION tool to highlight and delete sections from your background music file so that sufficient music remains to use as a background to your narrative. 5.3 Use the TIME SHIFT tool to align your background music file with your narrative file.
6. Combine and save files in mp3 format for podcasting.
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6.1 Select SAVE then EXPORT AS MP3 to save and combine your narrative and background music as an mp3 podcast file. 6.2 Upload your file for podcasting.
Bouncing Two Stereo Tracks to One Mono Track Now we have the audio file open that we are going to edit. Next, we need to split the left and right channels into their own separate tracks and then convert them into mono tracks. Figure 1 shows the menu to split the tracks into the left and right channels. Select the title of the audio track (on my track it is labeled “harder”). Once the menu comes up, select the Split Stereo Tracks option. You should now have two separate tracks; you will use this same menu shown in Figure 1 again to change the two tracks to mono. Select the title of each audio track, and select the Mono option.
Figure 1. Changing the Tracks to Mono Doing this allows the two tracks to be mixed together. Next, we mix the two tracks together into one single track, which is called bouncing. Select both tracks; you can do this one of two ways. You can select the audio pane, which is right under the drop-down menu you used to change the audio track to mono, and then select the other track while holding down the Shift key. Or, you can go to the Edit menu, followed by the Select submenu, and then select the All option. This selects all of the audio tracks in the entire project. Either way works the same for this project. You then need to go to the Project menu
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and select the Quick Mix option. This should bounce the two audio tracks into one single audio track.