OK, so here’s the thing: I have some live music recordings that I am trying to polish up. The people in the seat next to the recorder were talking at various points during the performance, and I would like to edit that out, if possible, as undesirable background noise. Unfortunately, I have NO idea how to start because I’ve never tried to do anything like this before. It’s a relatively small section of audio I’m working with, but I’ve never, ever, tried to edit audio at all, so everything in the program seems rather foreign to me. I tried reading the manual, but that didn’t help me much because I didn’t get a sense of which techniques I should be trying. If anyone has suggestions, I would greatly appreciate them.
[u]Audacity Editing For Beginners[/u] should get you started.
The people in the seat next to the recorder were talking at various points during the performance, and I would like to edit that out, if possible, as undesirable background noise.
The bad news is, you won’t be able to do remove the talking and leave the music. You’ll have to either live with it, or cut-out that part entirely. Although there are various filters and there’s a noise reduction tool (“effect”), voice and music are similar enough that they can’t be separated. If you have constant tone or “hum”, that can usually be filtered out. Or, if you have a small amount of background hiss, that can usually be removed. But, talking, barking dogs, sirens, etc., are usually impossible to remove. Pros still record in soundproof studios with very-good very low-noise equipment…
but I’ve never, ever, tried to edit audio at all, so everything in the program seems rather foreign to me.
Understandable… It’s not that easy… You’ve got to learn concepts, terminology, and how to use a new piece of (rather complex) software.
I am trying to polish up.
That’s a variation on “I need to clean up…”
I suspect the conversations are permanent performers in your show. There are no good ways to split actors, singers, or musicians apart in post production. The talkers are not “noise.” Noise, in Audacity Land is one single sound that doesn’t change over many minutes like hum, buzz, or air condition noise.
If the talkers are not audible at the same time as the music is, then, yes, you can cut them out without damaging the show.
Drag-select a portion of the blue waves where the talkers are. Then zoom into the waves with Control-E. Play it and make sure you select the voices. Drag-select and zoom in again if you need to. You can zoom out a little bit with Control-3 and zoom out to the whole show with Control-F.
When you find the blue waves of the people speaking, drag-select the waves and press Delete.
Repeat for all the talkers.
When you get the show the way you like it, File > Export a sound file. We strongly urge you not to damage or “step on” the original recording. It’s very common to assume you need to use an export filename identical to the original. That’s a bad idea. If anything goes wrong with the edit, export or other file management, you have no show and no way to get it back.
If you have talking at the same time as the music, that can not be cleaned.
Koz