Best practices for recording a piece a bit at a time.

[las14]

I’m getting acquainted with Audacity in order to record duets with myself (and, ultimately, hopefully, with other people). There’s loads to learn about making clips and moving them around in different ways, etc. If I knew what I wanted to do, I could focus on how to do it.

Can anyone give me advice about how to continue a track while keeping it absolutely at a steady beat? If I could hear it while the system was recording, I could just play along silently and start making sound at the appropriate time. But I can’t figure out how I’d do that. Do I have to record the next part, triggering the record activity when I click the icon and then edit out the delay? Any advice on editing out the delay while getting the end result of the two pieces exactly in time?

To rephrase. How do I record part of my piece, and then stop, and then add on the next part of the piece while ending up with an in-rhythm whole?

Tia

las

[DVDdoug]

You can make a rhythm track (AKA click track) for playback in your headphones.

Also see Multi-track Overdubs which will be useful for recording while listening to a backing track or click track.

Most modern professional recordings are made with a click track (at least the drummer is using a click track). Besides keeping a constant-accurate beat it allows the mixing engineer to mix & match the best parts of several takes in a process called "comping" (making a composite recording).