newbie to audacity here and couldnt find the help topic. i was just wanting to make a voice recording, change it a little with one of the effects, keep the original recording and mixed the changed recording with the original . sorry if i sound stupid to you young kids i’ve been getting dumber since i hit 40 years old. 
Which part are you having trouble with? How far have you got with the task?
If you feel a sudden urge to give us much more information, don’t fight it. “I’m speaking into a Donalin-4 USB microphone connected to my Dell Dimension laptop running Windows XP…”
Koz
in reply i am having trouble with getting the program to understand once the original recording is changed and renamed that i dont want it opened in a new window. i thought mix and render was for an additional box popping up under the original and mix and render blends those recordings.
Mix and Render will “mix” (add together) all of the selected tracks and combine them into a new track, deleting the original tracks in the process. In other words, the selected tracks are put into a mixing bowl, mixed together and then put back as a new track.
A similar thing happens when you “Export” except that in this case it is not only selected tracks that are mixed together, but all of the tracks in the project are mixed together to produce the new exported file. (Track Gain and Mute buttons are observed, so muted tracks will not contribute sound to the mix).
What I would suggest you do is:
- Record your original song.
- Export a WAV file of the track (it’s always good practice to export back-up copies of recordings while you are working - they may be deleted later when the project is complete if you are sure that you don’t want them.
- You now have a project with one unprocessed audio track. Select the track (double click on it, or click in the track control panel (the box on the left end of the track, taking care not to move any of the sliders). From the Edit menu select “Duplicate” (shortcut Ctrl+D). This will create a duplicate copy of the track.
- Make whatever changes you want to the duplicate track
- When you have finished all of the changes and have it sounding right, select all of the tracks and Mix and Render to a new track.
- Check that the mixed track does not clip (distort) - the mixed track will have a higher level than the original two tracks because they have been added together (mix two bowls of stuff and you end up with a bigger bowl of stuff). Use the Amplify effect if necessary to adjust the level.
- Export the finished masterpiece.