Audacity Forum

Hi I am just new to recording and not really familiar with all the technical jargon so I have a few questions the most important one being first.

Basically I want to record first a guitar, then a keyboard, then a bass guitar on three seperate tracks then bring them together to make a complete song. However I can't record the whole guitar track in one go without making errors. So I am going to end up with parts of the track that I don't want. So my question is

1) How do I delete certain bits of the guitar track that I don't want to bring the good bits together to make up the whole guitar track?

I have managed to figure out how to delete parts of the track from one beat to the next (i.e. say between 3 and 5) but I want to be able to be more specific than that and delete from any exact point to any exact point e.g. say from a quarter of the way into beat 3 to half the way into beat 4. How do I do this?

2) Also am I right in saying there is no customer support for audacity? Is there ever likely to be any?

3) Also what is the difference between deleting a part of a track and trimming it?

Thanks, Mark

<<<2) Also am I right in saying there is no customer support for audacity? Is there ever likely to be any?>>>

No, and you're looking at it. Anybody can do this. When you get further along in your skill, you can drop in and correct somebody that's not as good as you are.

<<<3) Also what is the difference between deleting a part of a track and trimming it?>>>

Spelling? You can get into editing semantics like trimming is deleting from either end of a clip and deleting is trimming something from the middle.


<<<1) How do I delete certain bits of the guitar track that I don't want to bring the good bits together to make up the whole guitar track?>>>

First I would Export the performance Captures--all of them--as WAV files to have something available to you if The World Ends and Audacity crashes.


Drag-select a portion of the work you don't want and press Delete. Audacity will close up the before and after as one new piece with the middle gone. Selecting the part you don't want is the trick.


Just to cover the bases, select the whole track you want to cut and Effect > Normalize > Remove DC Offset. Don't check anything else. Don't worry about it. It just makes editing a little easier.

You can use the magnify tools, Control-E, Control-F, etc, to get right down there and select a beat of the music. Then you can set a label there (Control-B) for later use. Then go find the other edit point by zooming in and out. Put a new label. Zoom back out and your drag select will become sticky or magnetic at the label points. Press Delete. And then UNDO when you mess it up.

The keyboard shortcuts are in Edit > Preferences > Keyboard. From memory, Control-1 zooms in a little, etc. I edit a show every week and I know what the announcer's voice looks like in the blue waves and don't need the speakers at all.

Performing accurate cutting and editing rapidly is what you pay somebody for. That's where the talent comes in.

Koz

affiliater82 wrote:1) How do I delete certain bits of the guitar track that I don't want to bring the good bits together to make up the whole guitar track?

Down at the bottom of the Audacity window there is a box that says "Snap to". In general you do NOT want to select that option.

You can do multiple "takes" of a track (on multiple tracks), then select (by clicking and dragging along the track with the mouse while holding down the left mouse button) unwanted areas and "remove" the selected areas in various ways. Go to the Edit menu and try "Delete", "Split Delete" and "Silence Audio". Each of these will remove the selected audio, but in different ways - try them out to see the differences.

affiliater82 wrote: 2) Also am I right in saying there is no customer support for audacity? Is there ever likely to be any?

There is a lot of documentation -
There is the Audacity wiki http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php? ... _Home_Page
the user manual http://audacityteam.org/manual/index.ph ... =Main_Page
Tips and Tutorials (see links at top of page)
and of course this help forum where you can ask/answer questions of other Audacity users.

Audacity is free, open source software, created and supported by ... well that could include you!

affiliater82 wrote:3) Also what is the difference between deleting a part of a track and trimming it?

Koz has already answered this one, and you should be able to tell just from trying it. If you select part of a track then use "delete" from the Edit menu, the selected area will be deleted. If you select part of a track then use "trim" from the Edit menu, the track outside of the selected area will be removed. If you select part of a track then use "Split Delete" from the Edit menu, the selected area will be deleted, but the space that was previously occupied by the selected audio will remain as empty space..

Hi thanks for taking the time to respond I will give it all a go, Mark

1) Hi thanks for your response it turned out to be as simple as de- selecting the snap to button. I want to also record bass guitar and and keyboard onto mycomputer. I have tried using the same guitar cable as the one I use with my normal guitar but there is no sound being recorded? Do I need a different lead for the bass guitar or is there just something I need to selct in the program? Thanks, Mark

It should have been the same lead. Does your regular guitar still work? Both instruments work with a magnetic pickup sending signals down a wire.

Does this lead plug into your keyboard and does that work?

Koz

Hi there, the normal guitar still works but the bass does not even though the lead plugs into the bass. I have tried playing around with the knobs on the guitar but its still not recording. Any suggestions of what to do/try now?

The lead soes not even plug into my keyboard (too big). It is an old keyboard so that may be why? What do you think I should do?

Best Regards, Mark

But the bass works plugged into its own amplifier, right? Are you sure?

<<<It is an old keyboard so that may be why?>>>

Who made the keyboard? Model numbers? One of my keyboards is a Yamaha DGX-500.

Koz

I talked to some of the rock band people in the building and they tell me some bass guitars have tiny amplifiers in them and the battery has to be healthy for them to work right.

Koz

Hi Koz thanks once again for your reply

the keyboard is casio CTK-450. It is an old keyboard so maybe they had different lead holes back then.

I plugged my bass into my amp and it doesn't appear to be working properly. At first it sounded like the sound was kicking in and out giving me a kind of broken reception sound but then any amplification seemed to dissaper completely.

1) The bass guitar is a yamaha RBX374. It is one of the cheapest basses that is an active bass with a battery in the back. If a bass guitar is active then does this mean that the battery has to work in order for me to get any amplification out of the amplifier or does it just mean that when the 'battery' is used that you get even more amplification/bass?

2) I thought there was an option from memory of turning the bass on (ie. making it active) but there does not appear to be any button to do this function? If this is the case maybe the battery is not working?