Thanks to this forum, I got Audacity up and running with good headphones.

[LAS14]

My first challenge is to figure out how to record a piece a bit at a time. There’s loads to learn about making clips and moving them around in different ways, etc. If I knew what I wanted to do, I could focus on how to do it.

Can anyone give me advice about how to continue a track while keeping it absolutely at a steady beat? If I could hear it while the system was recording, I could just play along silently and start making sound at the appropriate time. But I can’t figure out how I’d do that. Do I have to record the next part, triggering the record activity when I click the icon and then edit out the delay? Any advice on editing out the delay while getting the end result of the two pieces exactly in time?

To rephrase. How do I record part of my piece, and then stop, and then add on the next part of the piece while ending up with an in-rhythm whole?

Tia

las

[OxQQme]

1. Maybe you could find tour answer here

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=audacity

[LAS14]

4. A gold mine! Thanks. I hadn't thought to just use that one word. nt

[Make7]

2. Try looking at the Help files.

They are pretty good - although they tend to assume quite a bit of knowledge of audio and computers (especially regarding terminology).

[Note: my Audacity version is pretty old, so things may not be in the same exact place as described below.]

Under the Help menu (keyboard shortcut Alt+H) select Quick Help. From the left side navigation, choose FAQs. Scroll down to the heading Recording - How To's and click the Can I play a track while recording a new one on top of it? link. That gives the bare minimum instructions on how to set up the software, but includes a link to the Tutorial - Recording Multi-track Overdubs with further info.

Those help files are also online here:
https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/faq_recording_how_to_s.html#overdub
https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/tutorial_recording_multi_track_overdubs.html

You might find their forum more helpful (https://forum.audacityteam.org/index.php), someone might have already asked the same questions that you have. There is also a basic wiki page (https://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Audacity_Wiki_Home_Page).

It sounds to me like you just need to overdub your new part while listening to the previous one and then clipping and/or adusting their respective volumes as necessary. You may need to slightly edit the delay/latency depending on your software settings and your hardware. Do a couple test recordings following their overdubbing tutorial as a guide and play around with the outlined settings to see if you can get your setup streamlined for your needs. If you get stuck, try searching for and/or asking specific questions on their forum.

I didn't read your prior thread, so I don't really know what recordings you are making on your computer. And I haven't really used Audacity in quite a while, although I can probably remember the basics.

Once you get things setup, recording new tracks should be quick and easy - however, you may need to figure quite a few things out to get to that point. The software is very popular, so Google searches should also yield results.

Good luck.

[LAS14]

3. Thanks for your thoughts and your links! I'm sure they'll be helpful. nt