[Trombone-l] Audacity Setup for Multi-Track Tutorial

[John Cather]

The main thing is to measure the latency in your system so Audacity can be set to automatically compensate for it. Otherwise your tracks will not be in sync with each other. Mine was off by more than a quarter second.

Basically you record a click from a metronome for a few measures and then record a second track with that first one playing back through your system. (You can also have Audacity generate a click track under the tab: Generate and Rhythm track and play that and record). I literally hang my playback headphones on the recording microphone to do that. You are recording the clicks from the first track onto the second one. They will probably be out of sync. Then you zoom way in on your time scale at the top and measure the distance between the same click on the first track to the second track, in milliseconds. Just subtract the two numbers whatever they are. Mine was a difference of 283 milliseconds. Knowing that-In Audacity preferences, the first tab is Devices. The playback device and the recording device should show what you are using as an interface. For me, it is a Steinberg. Then below that is a window for latency compensation. I set mine at -283 milliseconds. Now, every track I record will be in sync with all the others.

There are a ton of things you can do with audacity and a few you can’t. One very cool thing is that you can change the tempo of anything recorded-under the tab “Effect”. I have my students use that to slow down fast and difficult passages so they can practice them slowly enough to get it right before they speed up.

You can do an auto punch-in which is very cool, but no auto punch out. You have to stop it manually.

Hope this helps.

Thanks
John Cather
John at CatherMusic.com




> On Sep 3, 2020, at 5:27 PM, Daryl Burch via Trombone-l <trombone-l at trombonelist.org> wrote:
> 
> Hey, fellow listers;
> Hope all’s well with you and yours! Awhile back somebody sent around a video tutorial on how to setup Audacity for multi-track trombone recording. Does anybody remember who made that? Possible send me/us the link to that video?
> 
> Got a new rig. And have new downloads of Audacity. And have to reset everything.
> 
> TIA for your help!
> 
> Cheers!
> -D-
> 
> Daryl Burch
> E: daryl at burchinteractive.com ✦ C: 707-338-8338
> 
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