Is it possible to change volume levels during a recording?

Hello,

I have a basic question. When you record something on Audacity, you set the volume level, record it, and it’s done. However, once you’ve recorded all the parts, and you are preparing a final mix, is it possible to change volume levels during the recording? For example, if the guitar track is one minute long, can you make the first 30 seconds relatively loud and the second 30 seconds softer? Then, when you export it, for example as a wav file, will it preserve the different volume levels?

Thank you so much,

Guy

I think that’s two different questions.

Once you have all the parts of your song properly recorded, you can change the mix during editing to make the volumes whatever you want. The Envelope tool (two arrows and bent line) will allow you to change the volume of any instrument wherever in the song you want.

Screen Shot 2020-08-10 at 7.47.20 AM.png
In this example, I reduced the volume of the sound at half-second and brought it back to full volume at one second.


https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/envelope_tool.html

Note to make this all work, each instrument has to be on its own track. We can’t split a mix up into individual instruments, voices, or sounds.

Audacity will automatically mix everything into one song when you export. If you want to save the song in individual tracks, you can do that with File > Save > Save Lossless. Only Audacity can open those. Those are multiple files and folders, so don’t lose any of the parts.

Koz

Thank you, Koz!