Audacity Forum

Hi everyone, my first time posting here. I was recording multiple tracks fine this morning. I was overdubbing a guitar solo onto a pre-existing backing track and guitar rhythm that I had overdubbed onto that backing track. Although not perfect, Audacity allowed me to record(overdub) another track over that backign track with guitar rhythm. But I started fooling around with some of the options to see if I could improve on the sound of the recording options and I have disabled something here that I don't understand.

Now, when I try to record another track over another one, the Record button is disabled and I can't overdub a new track over the track that is playing. Weird. I have gone to the preferences section and made sure to make sure the overdub option is enabled and in the Transpose menu I have checked the Overdub option as well. Still the Record button is greyed out when I play a track disallowing me from recording over the track that is playing.

I would appreciate some help on this one.


Also, second problem, and this is how I ended up screwing up my present Audacity settings somehow. Like I said, I was trying to fooling around with my settings to deal with a specific recording problem. Here is the original problem:

I am recording my guitar solo onto a backing track that has my guitar rhythm, and this is playing through my guitar amplifier. So I play the Audacity file and then overdub my guitar solo onto the backing track that is playing through my amp. The problem with this is that I also re-record the original backing track when I am playing/recording my solo, so for the length of the guitar solo, Audacity is recording the backing track twice so the final recording sounds very loud for the length of the guitar solo because of the double recording of the backing track. I was trying to find an option in Audacity that allows my to play an audio file and record over it, but not re-record the original file that I am trying to overdub onto. Does that make sense to everybody???

Anyways, I would appreciate any help that you all can give me.

Thanks in advance.

The record button is only available when playback is stopped, not while it is playing or paused, so press the stop button, then press Play.

Formula wrote:The problem with this is that I also re-record the original backing track when I am playing/recording my solo,

That's a sound card setting.
You are currently set up to record "Stereo Mix" when what you want to do is to record from the input that you are actually using (probably the Mic or Line input).
Go into your sound card settings and change the recording source (input) to the one that you are actually using.
There's information on this page about how to set up the system to record from "Stereo Mix" - you need to do the opposite: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Mixer ... trol_Panel

See Next Post...Thanks

Formula wrote:The problem is when I try to overdub onto the first track. When I play the first track, the RECORD button greys out and I'm unable to record an overdub.

Are you saying that the record button remains greyed out even after you stop playback?

Formula wrote: I'm recording from the External Mic.

Which is connected to the computer how?

Which version of Windows?
I presume that you are using Audacity 1.3.13? (check in "Help > About Audacity" if you're unsure).

Hi there. I`m using Audacity 1.3.12 on Windows 7

Thanks

I'm also trying to record on Audacity through my laptop and using a $10 external computer microphone.