Is this possible with Audacity?

[spinningrom]

Windows 8, Audacity 2.0.5, Lenovo Essential B5400 (MB822MB).

I have a long music track "long track", and a short sound track "the clap".

I would like to do this: long track on track 1, and while playing the long track (without any pauzing!!) adding several times the clap (will be written on track 2). The clap should be added/written every time I hit a key or keycombo.

Is this possible in Audacity?

Sorry if the question is already asked, but since I don't know the technical terms for this action, I didn't knew how to search on this forum.

[steve]

You can't paste audio into a track while Audacity is playing, and you can't import a file while playing.
You can record one track while playing another, but only record as one long track (which may be edited later).

If you tell us about the use case (why you need to do this), we may be able to suggest an alternative way to achieve the desired result.

[spinningrom]

The use: a long music track (typical dance-track), in which I want to do a 'count down' with 4 claps on certain intervals.
Now, I listen, mark down the time where the first of 4 claps should be, stop the track, look at the shape of the waveform and try to paste the clap exactly on the beat, etc etc... takes me 1 hour to add 16 claps in 1 track...
The track with the claps can be 1 long track, no problem for me.

[DVDdoug]

The clap should be added/written every time I hit a key or keycombo.

Audacity can't do that.

Ideally, you'd want a DAW or other MIDI application. (Audacity is audio-only and does not support MIDI.)

With MIDI, you'd normally play a musical-keyboard to generate/play the claps, but you could probably use the computer-keyboard (depending on the particular application) or you could program them if you can get the tempo/timing right.

With Audacity you have a couple of choices... You can duplicate & mix the two tracks, but you'd have to manually time-align the claps which would take some time.

Or, you could record new hand-claps with a microphone while listening to the backing-track with headphones, then mix later. But for good quality, that would require a good stage/studio microphone, and interface and a quiet "studio" with good (or dead) acoustics.

Note - Mixing is done by summation and the peak levels will increase. So in order to prevent clipping you may have to reduce the volume (Amplify effect) before or after mixing. If you do it after mixing, do it before exporting because Audacity can internally/temporarily go over 0dB, but "normal" audio files will be clipped at 0dB. Or, as an alternative to volume reduction, you can use the limiter or compressor effects to "push down" the peaks.

[steve]

You can add "labels" (markers) while playing. Press "Ctrl+M" then "Enter".
You can then use the labels as a guide to where to paste the hand-clap sounds.

If you're like me, you will find it almost impossible to press a key at exactly the right time, so the labels will just be an approximate guide, however, if you switch to "spectrogram view" (http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/spec ... _view.html) you will probably be able to see the beats easily:

tracks002.png (396.35 KiB) Viewed 584 times

[spinningrom]

thanks for the answers!
Didn't knew about the labels that can be marked during playing, that's a big step for me!
Thank you!

Midi: I'm a total newbie on that, so I'll try the label-thing first