Audacity Tutorial How to Multi Track Record Guitar and Voice at Same Time

Audacity tutorial on how to record 2 tracks or multi track at the same time. This tutorial shows how to record voice and guitar at the same time in Audacity.

Recording multi-track in Audacity is very simple. There are a number of ways to multitrack, but in this tutorial I will show one of the simplest ways. You need to have some way to get your microphones/instruments into your computer. To do this you will need a mixer.

We will be using the 2 channels of stereo for our multitracking. The guitar will be on the right channel and the voice will be on the left channel. Make adjustments to your mixer to place the guitar on the right and the voice on the left.

In Audacity you will need to open preferences and select devices. Choose the input you need for your mixer and make sure "Channels" is set to stereo.

As you record now Audacity will create a stereo track with guitar in right and voice in left. Once you have finished recording open the pull down menu on the right of the new track and select "Split Stereo Track."

Now you will have have 2 separate mono tracks, one with voice and one with guitar.

That is it. Good luck.
Andrew

Stephen Downes and Larry Lessig

'Busy' seems to have lost its impact this past couple of weeks. For my lack of input, I will make two entries today.

Through Stephen Downes' blog I recently stumbled upon EduTagger. As this site grows, it could turn into a very useful tool for finding and sharing online educational resources. I am in the middle of organizing a set of curriculum resources for a music course. All the resources come from the Internet. A site like this could be a great way to share all these types of resources with others. Share Share Share :)

A while back a watched a TED Talks video by Larry Lessig. Amongst my colleagues, this video has proved to be a great catalyst for heated discussions on artistic rights. Check out the video and join the discussion.



Andrew

Ambiguity Aversion

Ambiguity Aversion

Today I watched a short video on the Ellsberg Paradox. The Ellsberg Paradox tells us that when a person encounters a situation containing unknowns there is a survival reaction that takes place in the brain. Fear and avoidance are the dominate sensations experienced. This can explain why many people fear new technology tools. As I watched I thought of the learners I work with and how many times they are averse to using new technologies in their day-to-day lives. In light of the Ellsberg Paradox we must reduce the number of unknowns perceived by our learners as we introduce new concepts. This simples pretty obvious, but it is nice to see that there is a physiological reason for people's fears. If anything the Ellsberg Paradox can help me be more patient with learners that are reluctant to adopt new concepts.

Andrew

Tips for Recording Audio and Video

Boy, what a busy time of year. A music teacher's work is never done around now :)

Like many music teachers, I am involved in many concerts around this time of year. From time to time I like to record some of our shows. Here are a couple of things that I do to help get our shows recorded nicely.

I use a small digital audio recorder called the Edirol R-09. It gives great sound quality and is small enough to fit in my pocket. Before we begin playing I will lay the recorder on a chair or a music stand close to the stage, turn it on and let it do its thing.

It seems like every parent these days brings along a video camera to their children's shows. I never have a problem getting some video footage.

When I get the video footage and my audio recording I combine the two in iMovie or Windows Movie Maker. By combining the audio and video this way I get a great audio signal rather than the one captured by the parent's camera.

To edit the audio I sometimes use Audacity. This is a great free audio editor. Oftentimes I get my students to do the editing of our concert recordings. This is a great little project and they have WAY more patience than I do for these sorts of things.

Andrew

Mashup, Imitation and Creativity

I recently watched a "Ted Talk" by Larry Lessig entitled "How Creativity is Being Strangled by Law." I found him message relevant to my professional situation where I am constantly being confronted by questions of the "right and wrong" uses of online content.

Larry discusses the concept of Mashup as it relates to online content. In short, it is practice of taking a piece of existing content and using it as part of something new. This practice has been around for as long as we have been creating. Beethoven would use a musical theme from another composer as a basis of a new piece. Andy Warhol's image of the Campbell's Soup Can could be seen as an example of image mashup. Scratch DJs use vinyl recordings to create new music - Grandmaster Flash. I believe this artistic practice is widespread today because of the digital format of our content. Digital content lends itself to the art of mashup because it is infinitely editable. What a creative opportunity!

Young artists can use mashup as a easy entry point into the creative process. Rather than having to look for the creative inspiration in a blank canvas they can use an existing piece of content as a starting point in the creation of something and unique. This concept relates closely to my view on the role of imitation in the development of new artists. On March, 2007 I posted a talking-head video about my general thoughts on creativity. In particular, I talk about the role of imitation in the creative process. Check it out...



What is the role of mashup in today's new artists? Are we seeing mashup as the modern version of Beethoven using another composer's thematic material? hmmm

Andrew