dubing over

Special Interest Groups Recording Techniques
1

I have a track that I want to add my vocals over it, anyone know if I can do this with audacity of garage band? and if so how?

2

Oddly, there’s not a straightforward answer. It would be a good start to tell us which version of Audacity and which kind of computer you have. I’m typing on an Intel MacBook Pro OS-X 10.5.8 and I use Audacity 1.3.12.

I know you were hoping to avoid all that by posting down here in the fuzzy forum, but that’s the first thing we’re going to want to know.

Koz

3

The flip side to Koz’s reply: Yes you can do that with Audacity but you need appropriate equipment. Audacity 1.3.13 would be recommended.

4

I am using Audacity 1.3.13 beta and OSX 10.6.7 MacBookPro, I received a trac created on audacity from a hypnotherapist friend, and I want to put my vocals over her track maybe like 10 min into her track where her vocals that induce a state of hypnosis ends and the soundtrac continues on for a total of 1 hour time, I wish to add my script in my voice, here is her reply: It’s easy. You don’t cut and paste into my track. You stay with two tracks. Mine you leave as is. Yours you will need to add space to place your vocals where you want them. You do this by cutting the vocals on your track, and pasting them further down your track at the appropriate place. Then when you export to file, both tracks will be merged. Not sure she has explained this well but shows me it can be done.

5

Have a go with Audacity and you should discover that your friends description makes complete sense.

Here’s some steps that may help:

  1. Import the original track into Audacity
  2. Tracks menu > Add new > Audio track
  3. “Edit menu > Preferences > Devices” set the recording device to your microphone and set the number of channels to “1 channel (mono)”.
  4. Click on the new (empty) track at around 9 min 30 seconds and press the Play button (or spacebar) and have a practice doing your voice over (you should use headphones if you want to hear the original track - not loudspeakers).
  5. When you’re ready, press “Shift + R” to start recording from the current playback cursor position (9 min 30 unless you clicked somewhere else on the track).

Note that it may not be necessary to hear the original track while you record your voice over, in which case, record your voice first, then import the other track when your vocal track is done.

Remember, Audacity is designed to work with multiple tracks, so you can make new recordings of bits that you fluff onto new tracks, cut out bits that you don’t want, and move bits around so that they all fit nicely. Have a good long play before you start any serious work, and remember to keep backups of anything important.

Read the “Getting started guide”: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Getting_Started

This page may also be useful: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Creating_a_simple_voice_and_music_Podcast_with_Audacity