cut and paste

This is my first time using any audio software. I am trying to piece together parts of a piano recording I made. In order to avoid the sound of page turns, I recorded large chunks in the hope I could splice them together in Audacity. I couldn’t figure out how to bring two files in at once, so i copied from one file and pasted into the other. But no matter how “exact” i thought i was being, i hear an obvious little click where they match up. I would appreciate greatly any advice that can be offered.

You can do that but you need to use Find Zero Crossings: Audacity Manual .

If there are still clicks this may be because the recordings have DC Offset. In that case you should use Effect > Normalize… to remove DC offset.

It may be easier to use Tracks > Align End to End.


Gale

You may have better luck with a [u]crossfade[/u] instead of a “hard splice”.

The trick would be to make more of an overlap* than a traditional crossfade… Allow the last note/chord of the first part to decay naturally. Or maybe fade it out very slowly, or fade it out after the last bit of sustain is masked by notes in the 2nd section. If you do fade-in the 1st note in the 2nd part, fade-in the sound quickly just before the note begins.



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  • I normally call this a “DJ style crossfade” where the 2nd song starts as the 1st one is fading-out “naturally”, without the DJ artificially fading-out or fading-in either song.

Does Tracks > Align End to End do crossfading of the joins?


Gale

No it doesn’t, but once the tracks are aligned it is quite easy to slide the tracks along a bit with the Time Shift tool (and then apply fade out/in if required).