Audio Recording

This is part 1 of the Audacity mixing tutorial in Linux/Ubuntu. This tutorial assumes you already done recording your tracks and it is ready to mix. As a case example, lets use the two wav files in this tutorial: Mixing kick drum and bass for rock. The two audio wav files are kickdrum.wav and chorus bass.wav. Download it to your Ubuntu desktop. Once it is downloaded follow the rest of the steps:

Importing audio to Audacity for mixing:

1.) Launch Audacity (Applications – Sound & Video – Audacity).
2.) Let’s import the two audio tracks to Audacity. Go to File – Import – Audio.
3.) Under “Select one or more audio files”. Select “kickdrum.wav” – press hold Control key in your keyboard then click “chorus bass.wav”. This will enable you to select two files at the same time and import them together to Audacity. Once they are both selected, click “Open”. It will then be imported to Audacity such as shown below:

Clip duplicate/Repeating clips in the same track

Supposing you will “clip duplicate” the kickdrum.wav four times so that it will have an 8 seconds playing time (from the original clip of 2 seconds). “Clip duplicate” simply repeats the clip in the same track (track 2 for example where the kick drum is located).

To do this:

1.) Select track 2 (kickdrum.wav). To select, simply click the area indicated by the arrow in the screenshot:

After selection, it will turn to darker color.

2.) After it was selected, go to Edit – Copy.

3.) Edit – Move to Cursor – to Track End.

4.) Finally to paste: Edit – Paste. This will create the second duplicated kick drum clip in track 2:

5.) To paste two more clips to reach the 8 seconds mark, Edit – Move to Cursor – to Track End, then Edit – Paste. Repeat this process until it reaches the 8 seconds mark. Below is what it looks like after completion. The kick drum on the second track reaches the 8 seconds (the same with the bass guitar). This is done using clip duplication technique:

You have just completed importing and arranging the tracks in the Audacity multi-track. To save a multi-track project: Go to File – Save Project → when you see the warning, just click OK. You can save the project to your Ubuntu desktop. Name the project as “audacitymixingtutorial.aup” and finally click “Save”.

Note: You might see a warning such as “Project depends on other audio files”. Click “Copy All Audio into Project (Safer)”.