9th of May 2012.

Today in class, since Mr Cavill was absent, we continued to experiment on Audacity Portable. While experimenting with this application, I have developed a basic understanding on how to use the application properly.

Below is a few of the skills I have learnt during the duration of the lesson.

Skill 1: How to record using Audacity Portable

Basically, by pressing the button with a red circle in a centre on the toolbar, you can easily record whatever you like. After recording your piece, click on the button with a gold-ish square also on the toolbar to stop recording activity. Click the start of the piece and press the play button to hear your final recorded piece.

Skill 2: How to import audio files using Audacity Portable
Importing audio files in Audacity Portable can be very challenging, but it can be done in a small amount of easy steps. Firstly, you have to click on the file option on the top bar of the window. Once you have clicked on this, you should have many options avaliable to you. The option you have to press however, is the link that says import. When this is pressed, you can import files from your documents, USB etc. When you have located the file you want to import, select it and press the open button located near it.

Skill 3: Editing sound
Audacity is a software that provides many different tools to edit sound. These tools can be found in the toolbar beside the record, play and stop buttons.

These are the tools and their functions:

Selection Tool
This tool can be used easily and effectively for highlighting any part of the sound that you wish to edit or delete.

Envelope Tool
This tool is one that is able to adjust and change the volume of any part of the audio, just by dragging the blue lines that appear in and out.

Zoom Tool
This tool is useful as it helps to zoom into your track, therefore making it easier to edit your piece of audio.

Drawing Tool
Using this tool gives you the ability to move the individual handles in your audio piece.

Timeshift Tool
This tool can only be used when you are using more than one track and gives you the ability to move the track to wherever you want to.

Multi Tool
This tool gives you acess all of tools at once.

Skill 4: Deleting sound
You can do this by selecting the part of the sound you want to delete. Afterward, just press the delete button on your keyboard.

Skill 5: Adding effects to the sound
You can add effects by pressing the effect button in the menu. Then, select the effect that you want to add from the drop-down menu. You can then experiment with the effects on your sound.

Here are three effects I experimented with and how they alter the sound file when used.

BassBoost
This effect basically allows the audio to increase the bass frequency.

Change Pitch
This effect allows you to change the pitch of your audio without changing the tempo of the audio. The pitch change can be altered in four different ways. The first is by musical note, the second by semitones, the third by frequency and lastly by percent change.

Reverse
This effect reverses the audio so that the end of the audio will be heard first and the beginning of the song will be heard last.