Record & Edit sound in Audacity

Record

1. Click the Record button, pause for one second, and speak a short sentence (“The cat sat on the mat”) into the microphone
2. As you speak the track waveform will appear in the Left channel and
3. The Right channel as it is recorded
4. Click the Stop button (which will become available when you click the Start button)
5. The cursor should automatically return to the beginning of the track; if not, click the Skip to Start (Home) button
6. The thin line at 0.0 on the timeline is the cursor which has now been returned to the start of the track
7. Click the Play button (or the Spacebar) to hear your recording:
   • note the cursor will be visible moving left to right across the Timeline and track
   • the Playback Level (volume) can be monitored in the Playback Meter Toolbar
   • the elapsed time can be viewed in the Time Toolbar

Save

At this stage, you should save your current Audacity project. Use the following menu options: File » Save Project » Save Project As

Or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+S

Edit

Your sound recording includes a second or more of silence at the beginning. We are now going to remove that silence.

Zoom

Zooming in on the track allows a fine selection of parts of a track to be made.

1. Hover your mouse cursor over the very beginning of the track, hold down the Ctrl button and use your mouse’s scroll wheel to zoom in (and out) — the mouse cursor will change to a right-pointing hand while you do this
2. Observe the timeline “stretch” (and “shrink”) as you zoom in and out
3. You can also use the Zoom In and Zoom Out buttons
4. Use the waveform to guide you to where the silence ends, and your voice is first heard

Select

Your focus should be on mastering selection techniques! In this tutorial, I make a basic selection by left-click dragging and then I refine the selection using the Selection options in the interface:

1. Left click just before where you judge the sound of your voice starts (using the waveform to guide you) and drag to the left
2. Fine-tune the selection if required: set the start to 00h00m00.000s

Delete

Once the selection has been made, pressing the Del button on the keyboard will delete that selection.

Export

Do not confuse exporting with saving. You can save your project file, but you create your final sound file by exporting it using the following menu options: File » Export Audio…

Next steps

Learn how to Change the tempo of an audio track with Audacity.