Hello! I’m a first-time poster. I’ve been using Audacity a bit here and there, nothing serious–mostly editing tracks for my students to perform color guard/dance routines to.
This year, I’m trying to edit the track so that a note in the orchestral arrangement hangs on longer than it currently does, for dramatic effect–going from only about .3 seconds to ideally 2-3 seconds. Here’s what I have tried:
Change Tempo on the selected area, having it do the “high quality” change–this leaves it sounding frankly alien.
Copy/pasting the section back to back (making sure to do it on the zero crossings–I did try to read up on this before posting!)–this makes a very obvious click/pop distortion with every iteration.
Neither of these is working and I’m afraid that’s the extent of my expertise. I could really use some help!
Change Tempo on the selected area, having it do the “high quality” change–this leaves it sounding frankly alien.
Yeah, that’s a BIG “stretch”.
Copy/pasting the section back to back (making sure to do it on the zero crossings–I did try to read up on this before posting!)–this makes a very obvious click/pop distortion with every iteration.
You can get smooth transitions with a [u]crossfades[/u] (Fade-out and fade-in with an overlap.)
But the volume & tone/timbre may change over the 0.3 seconds and the crossfades probably won’t be “perfect” so you still may hear some repeating & weirdness. And it may be good enough since you’re dong in a dance performance, not trying to make a music recording for listening.
You’ll have to copy that section into a new track and slide it into place.
If you weren’t already doing this when cutting & pasting, you can increase the length exponentially by copying the new-doubled length every time. i.e. Duplicate the 0.3 seconds then duplicate the 0.6 seconds, etc. My spreadsheet says 2.4 seconds after doubling 3 times but that doesn’t take into account the overlap.
I don’t know why you’re getting clicks & pops with the zero crossing but a fade or crossfade usually solves “everything”. Sometimes you can make a short crossfade (a few milliseconds) or you can make a longer fade and it will fix those clicks & pops.