Audacity: Adding Effects to a Project

Adding effects to a project

The controls reviewed thus far are simple ways to record sound and edit recordings.  Audacity does have some features that can be used to make your project sound better.  These features are mostly found under the generate and effect menus.  We will practice integrating a few of these effects and sounds.  Spend some time reviewing the sounds so you know what each effect can do for your audio recordings.

Activity: Imagine that you wanted to ask someone a few interview questions, but wanted to record the questions together on the same audio track.  How would they know when to respond or have time to fit their response between questions?

Ask a few questions on the same track.  Stop the recording and left click between two questions.  Click Generate / Silence… and create 3 seconds of silence.  Click OK.  You will now see a skinny line inserted where the cursor was.

But what if you wanted your students to only insert a response to certain questions, or you wanted to catch their attention after a particular question?  You can insert a tone or white noise.  Left click between two questions.  Click Generate / Tone… and create 1 second of a tone.  Click OK.  Try inserting white noise by clicking in a different part of the track.

(generating noise or silence)

Activity: How can you make your track sound more like a radio commercial?  We can add effects, like fading in or out, or even an echo, to parts of the track.  Start by selecting part of a track- point, click and drag over someone’s voice or part of a recording.  Click Effect / Fade in to have someone’s voice fade in.  On your own, try to fade out a different part of the track and add another effect from the menu.  Any option followed by an ellipsis (…) means that you will have to choose additional options, such as duration, pitch or the number of times to perform a function, like repeating a phrase.

(using effects to enhance recordings)