So, I recorded a voice track along with a karaoke song version. Some sections of the voice track need resung, is this where ‘overdubbing’ comes into play? I’ve done a few takes trying to get it right, but I then remembered about overdubbing in one of the FAQs. I’m VEEEERY new to Audacity, so I’m not sure if this is the proper application for an overdub as I didn’t see anything in the FAQs on how to do one.
Any help would be much appreciated!
BTW I’m using Windows XP, Audacity loaded from the .exe installer
You do overdubbing before you get it wrong the first time. Once you combine a good karaoke track with a bad voice, the whole thing is trash. You can’t take them apart again, unless they’re on two separate tracks.
In overdubbing, you play the karaoke track to your headphones and then sing and the voice goes onto a separate track. If you sing again, it will make yet another track. Add trumpets, another track.
An overdubbing project can delete, shift, filter and process any of the voices of instruments independently of all the others.
The overdubbing tutorial is in two general parts. We reviewed hardware devices which make overdubbing very easy and allow you to hear yourself while you sing. You can do overdubbing without the special hardware (the other half of the tutorial), but you can’t hear yourself sing other than cupping your hand over your ear.
Before recording your voice the first time you should have imported the backing track (File > Import > Audio)
Then record the vocal while listening to the imported track through your headphones. This will create a voice only track below the backing track.
If there are parts that need correcting/re-recording:
Use the Envelope Tool to silence the bad parts on the vocal track: Audacity Manual
Then record the new “takes” in the same way that you recorded your voice the first time.
I’ve done a couple of recordings along with the karaoke track playing. There’s some parts that turned out great, others I’d like to fix. Is cut/paste an option? Meaning, I cut the section I want fixed and paste in that same section from another take? The multiple vocal tracks are in the same ‘project’ that I saved.
For many reasons, the method that I suggested here works a lot better than cutting and pasting into the same track.
That’s fine. They will be mixed into a single audio file when you export.
If necessary you can use the Time Shift tool to slide audio sections left/right so that they line up correctly.