Fade Down but not Fade Out?

[MyVoice4U]

Using Audacity 1.2.4 on Windows XP.

Using 2 audio tracks, music & vocal, to record radio commericals. Once vocal is recorded, I import music from mp3.

I need to be able to fade the music track down but not fade it out completely. Music volume should start up, then fade down, running under the vocal the entire time, then fade up to its original level at the end of the track.

Don't see any easy way to do this. Have tried the Envelope tool, but it's not very user friendly.

Is there a way to do it using slider/mixer controls? Any other suggestions?

Many thanks!

[kozikowski]

The envelope tool is the user friendly tool.

Audacity doesn't do anything in real time, so the only other option is to pre-cut the music beds into proper fades at the appropriate times using cold script readings and a stop watch, then put each music cut and segment onto its own track versus the voice bed. Mix as needed. It shouldn't take you more than four or five days of work.

You are the poster child for an external mixer. Produce the music bed perfect and flat. Play it back into your external mixer along with your live microphone. Live fade the music bed as needed using the knobs or faders and record into a fresh Audacity track. You don't even have to pay attention to delay or transition failures since the mixer show is the edit/client master. You can (if you wish) crumple up the original music track and throw it away at the end. Being a compulsive engineer, I wouldn't do that, but that's just me.

Yes, you can do everything inside the computer, it just takes longer.

Koz

[steve]

The envelope tool is the user friendly tool.

Yes it is, but I don't find it very user friendly either.

An alternative method is to duplicate the track (Ctrl+D) and use the volume slider (or the Amplify effect) to reduce the level of both copies. You can now fade one of the copies to silence, but the other copy will still be heard (at a lower level than the original).