Help finding the right effect...

[monodemono]

Hey, I have this audio track (it was a midi, now it's a normal stereo audio track). The midi was piano sound, and I want the first note be held for a few seconds. Basically, I'm trying to suspend part of the audio for a few seconds, without the pitch or anything changing (that's why I can't just slow it down). Anyone know a plugin? I already have the LDASP or whatever it is, and all the other plugins listed on the audacity download page on the website.

Thanks,

[steve]

Select the bit that you want to change, then "Effect" menu -> "Change Tempo"

[monodemono]

Select the bit that you want to change, then "Effect" menu -> "Change Tempo"

I've already tried that, but the problem is that I need it to last a longer amount of time, that just seems to shift it in the selected area. It might be because it's such a short sample I'm getting, because it's a single note. The longest sample I can get is 0:00.121837 and I've tried all different ways with it, I need the note to hold for at the least 0:00.500000, but a whole second would be nice too.

Thanks.

[steve]

So you are wanting to "time stretch" by a factor of around 10:1? (1/10th second becomes 1 second).

That is a lot of stretching and will have various problems. Since it is a piano sound, you are dealing with a sound that is quite percussive, with a slow decay. Only the low notes of a piano would naturally last for around a whole second. If you want it to still sound like a piano, you may want to stretch the note a little using "Change Tempo" (so as to emulate a held note) and then follow it with a pause. You would do this by splitting the track after the first note so that you have the first note on track one and the rest of the recording on track 2, then use the "Time Shift" tool to slide the second track a little to the right. http://audacityteam.org/manual-1.2/toolbar.html

I find that this kind of operation is easier in Audacity 1.3.4 beta as it allows multiple clips in the same track. You can have both v.1.2.x and 1.3.x installed at the same time as long as they are installed in different directories (but you can only run one at a time). Audacity v.1.2.x projects can be opened in v.1.3, but once opened they are converted to the 1.3 format. Audacity v.1.3 projects cannot be opened in v.1.2.x

From your description, it sounds like you would get better results by going back to the MIDI file and changing the first note there, then recording it again as a wav. You could perhaps save time by simply re-recording the first note, importing it into Audacity use it to replace the first note of your original recording.