Audacity Basic Podcast Tutorial By James Clark Audacity is best used for recording audio through microphones and then exporting the audio. After audio has been exported from Audacity, it can be used right away or to be imported into a video editing software like Adobe Premiere. This is the Audacity workspace: For the purposes of this basic tutorial, most of the buttons and other features can be ignored. The main things to take note of are the circular coloured buttons on the top left of the program. To record sound, make sure your microphone of choice has been connected to your computer before opening Audacity, if not, then close Audacity and open it again. To begin recording, hit the red circle button on the top left of the screen. It looks just like the record symbol on a camera or smartphone.
Once you hit record, a track will appear in the workspace that contains a visual representation of the sound you recorded. This is a good time to make sure that Audacity is actually recording from your microphone and not another source. Try snapping your fingers very close to the microphone and see if you can see any spikes in the audio track indicating a raise in volume. If you do then you are safe to record, if not, then click on the dropdown menu with the microphone symbol next to it on the top right of Audacity. Make sure your specific microphone is selected and try recording again. If you don t see your microphone in the dropdown menu, then try closing Audacity, re-connecting your microphone, and trying again. After you have recorded some audio, press the stop button on the top left. If you would still like to record more after that then feel free to hit record again and Audacity will create a second track below the first that starts after the end of your first track.
No matter how many tracks you have, when you export your project, it will all combine into one track and act like any other sound file. If you don t like what you recorded in one of your tracks, then feel free to click on the tiny x button on the top left of the track to get rid of it. Keep recording and cutting until you have a full recording ready to be used outside of Audacity. In the individual tracks, there are two simultaneous wavelengths. This is the representation of the left channel and the right channel for stereo sound. If your recording seems too heavy on either the left or the right channel, you can combine the channels by going to the top-left Tracks dropdown menu and clicking Stereo track to mono. This will not negatively affect how the recording sounds, it will just take both channels and combine them together so that when you listen to it again, both the left and the right channel sound exactly the same.
When you are happy with your audio and you re ready to take it out of Audacity, make sure you save your Audacity project. This will ensure that after you export it, you are still able to open up your project and make some changes. After you have saved your project as an example.aud, then you will also have to export your audio to use it as an mp3 or wav file. Under the File dropdown menu, the same place you used to save your project, is an option called Export.... Select this option. Next, Audacity will give you an option of what to name your file, where to put it, and what type of file you would like it to be. Select the folder you d like it to be placed in, name it whatever you want, and open up the Save as type dropdown menu. There will be many options that you can choose from, the most basic ones are WAV (Microsoft) signed 16 bit PCM for a.wav file and MP3 Files for a.mp3 file. Choose your file type and select Save.
After you have selected save, an Edit Metadata box will appear. This is only really useful for artists creating songs or sound effects that will be used publicly or commercially. This box can be ignored and you can select Ok without filling anything out. After this box has disappeared, you have successfully saved both a project file (.aud) and your actual audio file (.wav or.mp3). The project file will only be useful in Audacity but your audio file can be used either right away or to be used in another program. It is just like any other.mp3 file you may have used before. If you were specifically creating a podcast and now have your project in an audio file format, you are now done!