Audio Editing with Audacity and Authenticity in DIY Publishing!

Authenticity means that something is genuine or unique, reliable, and some what different.  Whether the authenticity in DIY publishing is for radio, video or print, generally the product is something of your own idea that has the ability to set your work apart from others.  In “The Minutemen” article by Azzerad, “The Minutemen…were paragons of the subversive idea that you didn’t have to be a star to be a success.  Their hard work and relentless, uncompromising pursuit of their unique artistic vision have inspired countless bands.”  You can be influenced by or emulate others’ work whom you idolize or admire, but eventually in the end the final product is yours and changed to fit what you like and your vision or sound.  It’s important to be authentic in your work because otherwise you’re just plagiarizing someone else and it’s not yours.

When trying to create you’re own idea, you need to first figure out what type of audience you want and how recognized you want to get.  That plays a part in the type of work you do.  You want your work to set you apart from others.  This is what I needed to take into consideration when I created my first Podcast.  I wanted to set myself apart from others and still focus on something I enjoyed myself.

Audacity was the audio editing program I needed to use and if you’re a novice user, such as myself, then it’s definitely not an easy program to maneuver if you have no prior experience.  I didn’t watch the tutorial but I’m sure it would be helpful to first time users.  I basically just played around with the program and figured it out as I went along with the assistance of someone else who had knowledge of Audacity.

The first thing I needed to decide was what I was going to say or what music to choose.  I decided to go old school with the classical compositions of Beethoven and Mozart.  Downloading Audacity onto my laptop wasn’t difficult and it was fairly quick.  Then, I needed to find my music.  I searched a couple open source music sites with public domain until I found the songs I wanted.  I chose four songs that I liked and are the more popular songs that many should know and downloaded it onto my laptop.  I then imported all four songs into Audacity.  Before I cropped anything, I recorded my own audio track of what I wanted to say so I knew how long it was going to be with everything together.

I then needed to figure out an order I wanted my songs to go in that would be easy to make transitions into one another.  I also didn’t want a very loud song to be on in the background while I talked either.  I needed to take all those things into consideration when I made my podcast and while I did my audio editing.  I had to fade out each song to help transition the next song in.  I faded in the next song, and used the fade out feature on the last song so it didn’t sound like it ended abruptly.  I used the Auto Duck feature during the song I was talking over so it would be lower than my audio track.  I also used noise reduction on my audio part to help minimize the background noise if there was any.  I cut out any excess music that I didn’t want from each track and timed it out accordingly and joined the tracks together.  Then I exported my new audio file to my laptop, then uploaded it to Sound Cloud.  I tried to copy the URL for the upload so i can input it into my WP account but it wouldn’t allow it.  I then just pasted the URL into my blog post and that worked.  For a first time audio editor, I think I did a decent job, thankfully with some help.  It was certainly a challenge but practice makes anything perfect.

Composers: Beethoven (Fur Elise, and 5th Symphony) and Mozart (Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, and Turkish March)

Sources: 1Classical.com and freemusicarchive.org