Introduction
All the way back in 2005, the Oxford Dictionary declared “podcast” its Word of the Year in the United States. Although this pronouncement was a bit preemptive, podcasts have nevertheless experienced a surge of popularity in the recent years - including, of course, a number of history podcasts. In fact, graduate students in Northeastern’s own History Department have been making their own Breaking History Podcast for several years now. Today, we’re going to learn some of the basics of recording and editing audio using the open-source software Audacity.
You will be working in pairs today. By the end of the class, the goal is to have a roughly 3-minute recording where each of you gives a short “pitch” for your final project idea interspersed with music and sound effects. It should incorporate the following components:
- Brief musical introduction
- Audio from each person pitching their project
- Sign-off
Part I: Recording
As a class we will watch the first 5:00 of Pat Flynn’s “How to Record and Edit a Podcast in Audacity (Complete Tutorial)”.
Go off in pairs and find a quiet space to record. You are each going to record a 30-60 second “pitch” for your final project. Because people hate the sound of their own voice, you’re going to record your pitch on your partner’s laptop and vice-versa. You’re welcome to record multiple takes and only keep the tracks that you like. After recording, each of you should now have one track in your Audacity project of the other person’s pitch.
Once you’ve finished recording, export your track as a WAV 16-bit file and then share it with your partner over Slack Direct Message. Each of you should then import this shared file into your project so that you have TWO tracks, one for each of your pitches.
Try listening to each of the tracks with your headphones. Debrief with your partner: do you notice any difference in sound quality? Does one laptop’s microphone seem better than the other?
Part II: Editing
Watch 5:00-11:15 of Pat Flynn’s “How to Record and Edit a Podcast in Audacity (Complete Tutorial)”. Then try to do all of the the following:
- Use the Selection Tool and delete or cut any leading or trailing dead sound or long silences in your tracks.
- If needed, use the Envelope Tool to adjust the volume of your tracks or specific parts of each track so they’re relatively even
- Use the Time Shift Tool to move each track so that they will play back-to-back
- Go to YouTube’s Audio library Free Music and choose a song for your “intro.” Please don’t go down the rabbit hole of finding the perfect song, just grab anything that catches your eye. Import the song into your Audacity project as a new track
- Use the Time Shift Tool to have a roughly 10-second musical intro from your chosen song
- Use the Envelope Tool tool to fade the song out as it leads up to your first “pitch”
- Record a new track where you say “sign off” and say goodbye to your listeners, then use the Time Shift Tool to position that track at the end of your combined recording.
- Bonus: overlay a sound effect from YouTube Library Sound Effects somewhere in your recording.