Concatenating with fading and mixing

[nooberman]

I've searched here but cannot find my question answered anywhere. The manual implies that several tracks (songs) can be imported and mixed. I was able to do this and completely "mash" 2 songs. What I really want to do is import and concatenate 2 songs and mix the last 4 seconds of the first song into the first 4 seconds of the second song much like radio stations sometimes fade out and in 2 songs.

Is this possible in Audacity 2.0 (I took all the plug-ins too)? If so, could someone here post the details as to how it's done? Thanks

[PGA]

You have your two songs on two stereo tracks, right? You export them and they get, as you said, "mashed". Before exporting, select the Timeshift tool from the Toolbar (the one with the double-ended arrow). Drag one track to the right so that it only partially overlaps the other by four seconds. Now select the last four seconds of the first track and use Effect > Fade Out; then select the first four seconds of the second track and Effect > Fade In. Now listen to the "join" to see if you like it. If you don't, use Undo (Ctrl+Z) to reverse the changes then try longer/shorter fades and/or different overlap points until you get a mix that you like. Once you're happy with the mix, export the result.

[nooberman]

Thank you for your reply but I’m still having problems using the time shift feature. I wonder if you could step me thru the process from the import process. I will include snips here so you can visualize what I’m trying to do.
1) I import song “A” into a project
2) I import the song I want to concatenate and fade in with as song “B” (let’s assume each song or track is pre-faded for now)
3) I then want to concatenate song “B” onto the end of song “A” with about 3 seconds of overlap for each track.

When I try to set the timeshift button and drag the lower track, both upper and lower tracks move. Maybe I’m going about all wrong as I admit, I am a novice. Could you step thru the process starting with the imports? Maybe I’m not doing imports correctly.
Here’s my sample project as an attachment:

[nooberman]

UPDATE: I found out why I could not get the Timeshift tool to work for me. Somehow (and I did not set this feature on) Sync Lock tracks was checked by default. YOU MUST TURN THIS OFF if you want to mix and fade multiple tracks in a project. Now I can move with the Timeshift tool in each track independently getting the exact overlap I want. The "overlap" is where the mixing is automatically occurring in Audacity. I recommend pre-fading each track first and setting the amplification to your desired value before doing mixing. It keeps the process more straightforward.

I'm still experimenting but hope to mix by fading in and out the starts and ends of up to 10 songs much like a DJ would do. Thanks to all who posted here.

[Gale Andrews]

UPDATE: I found out why I could not get the Timeshift tool to work for me. Somehow (and I did not set this feature on) Sync Lock tracks was checked by default.

It really isn't enabled by default, but you can in fact see it's on in your image (the clock symbol to right of the volume sliders).



Gale