Audacity Forum

Dear Forum Members,
I have a question. I imported a wave file into my audio program Audacity version 2.3.1.
This has happened without problems. But I want to cut a small piece in the beginning of the song. When I click on the scissors and then try to cut a piece of my song, then each time the two tracks disappear with the pattern waves.
Can anyone of you explain to me what exactly I need to do to cut a small piece in the beginning of my song?
Grtz
Gilbert

Select/highlight the part you want to delete, before cutting. You can do that by clicking & dragging over the part you want to select. Then it works just like a word processor... The selected part is removed (chopped-out and not replaced by silence).

If you're loosing everything when you cut, you may be configured to automatically select the whole file when starting (I believe that's an option).

It's generally best to cut on the zero-crossings to prevent a "click" at the start. And/or you can use a fade-in (after cutting). It can be a short-unnoticeable few-millisecond fade-in or a longer fade-in if you like.

And if you need to be precise it may be helpful to do it in two steps, zooming-in to make the second more-careful cut.