Audacity Question

[chowell]

I am currently working on an 8 song medley which I am using Audacity to mix the songs together. Can anyone with Audacity experience give me some tips on mixing them together smoothly? So far, what I am doing is choosing the portion of the song I want, highlighting and deleting the rest of it, then importing the next song, cutting it and pasting it at the end of the previous track. It is obviously working to bring it into one track, however it is very choppy right now. Just wondering if there is a better way to do so, and if I am on the right track, which effect will lead one song into the next smoothly?


Thanks in advance.
Corey

[Paul Roberson]

You may have to have a quick fade down and fade up between songs.

Not fade down to silence but the fade down and the fade up happening at the same time.

[zman]

Corey,

You will want to take advantage of creating a project in Audacity. That way you can keep coming back in and tweaking. Envelopes and additional tracks are the best way to do this, that way you can come back and make mods and not have the data deleted. I am lucky enough to have proximity access to Terry Dyke. He has given the Audacity class at PLUS, and most recently he gave us a refresher at one of our mini events at my house. Send me your email in a PM and I can share a copy of his material.

Mark

[George Simmons]

One of the ways that has worked best for me is stretching the timing out, listening repeatedly until I've got the exact spot(s) chosen, and then splicing the two songs together on an upbeat.

George

[chowell]

How do you stretch the timing out?

Thanks.
Corey

[Tim Fischer]

chowell wrote:

How do you stretch the timing out?

There's a zoom tool (magnifying glass) -- left and right mouse buttons zoom in and out.

I like to cut my songs to no more than around 3 minutes, so I'm always splicing pieces out of tracks. If I do my job correctly, the only people who know the song is cut is the people that really know the track well. What I like to do is:

1) Make sure I find a good candidate positions to cut to and from. Examples of bad positions are in the middle of a word/phrase, where a cord is leading to another cord (musically) that won't be resolved in the destination, etc.

2) Grab a little more of both samples than I really want (just a fraction of a second will do).

3) Zoom WAY in, slow the audio down and listen for a good spot. On the waveform display, doing a cut at a zero-crossing is ideal. Trim the end of the one piece and start of the other as necessary

4) Listen, and repeat step 3 until I'm satisfied.

5) If all else fails, I'll put a small, very fast cross-fade between the two, which usually hides any minute imperfections.

Also, be sure to take advantage of Audacity's multitracking ability. It's MUCH easier to use two tracks for the cut instead of trying to make it perfect on a single track...

Good luck!

-Tim

P.S. If you'd like to post a sample of what you've done, we can probably critique it and give you some specific tips

[Tim Fischer]

> where a cord is leading to another cord (musically)

Ack, I must have been really tired last night when I wrote that. I of course meant "Chord".

These are the times I wish we could edit older posts

-Tim

[chowell]

Thanks guys! I'll do some more work with it tonight. That has been a real challenge....trying to find a good part to cut at. What I am trying to do is take 8 songs and mix them together using certain parts of each song. I did not know you could zoom in. I did see you can slow it down but I did not think to do that to try and find the optimal spot to cut. Let me know any other ideas that might be helpful.

You guys are great!

Corey

[Tim Fischer]

Another thing I should have mentioned is that the tempos and beats must line up or people will notice it. In real music (especially pop music), the tempo rarely suddenly changes-- it will speed up or slow down, but not go instantly from one tempo to another. Audacity does have a "change tempo" function that you can use to try to mate up two clips with slightly different tempos.

It takes a bit of practice but once you get the hang of it you'll be a pro. Sort of like sequencing .