Singularity on the Plane

Audacity is a free (open source) audio recording application. It is multiplatform, with versions for Windows, Linux, and OS X. By default it outputs the final audio in ogg/vorbis, but mp3 support can be added quite easily.

In this article I’ll guide you how to record a karaoke using Audacity. What it means is that you have an instrumental (music-only) version of a song and you want to add your (horrible) sound to it.

First of all you need to have the instrumental version of the song itself. In the Japanese music scene, singles are released in CD which also includes its instrumental version so download go buy that CD and rip the audio. Audacity supports wav, mp3, ogg, and some other formats as its input.

After that download the program and install it. For this guide I’m using version 1.2.6 for Windows. The first screen should look like this:

Now make sure your mike is plugged to the right place and the correct stream (e.g., “Mic”) is selected in the input drop down. Press the record (red circle) button and mumble some words. You’ll see a new audio track created. Press the stop (yellow square) button and try to play back by pressing the play (green arrow) button.

In the top left of every audio track, there is a small “x” button (pictured above). You can click it to delete the track. If you think the recorded volume is too loud or small, delete your first audio track, adjust the volume (the slider with a mic icon), and try another recording. When you are satisfied with the volume, you can go to the next step.

Load the instrumental version of the song from “File”->”Open…”. After the importing process is done you will see the the audio tracks. Before you start recording though, you need to make sure that Audacity plays those tracks while recording. This step is probably the most important but nonobvious. Go to “Edit”->”Preferences…”, open “Audio I/O” tab, and select “Play other tracks while recording new one” (see below).

After that you can go to the real fun. Press the record button and sing until the song ends. Your voice will be kept in a new track so if you’re not satisfied just delete the track and record again. To finish, select “File”->”Export As Ogg Vorbis…” and the resulting file can be played in any sane media player (such as VLC or Windows Media Player after installing the codecs).

Below are some stuffs which you probably want to do…

Changing pitch

If you can’t hit some note because it’s too low or high, you might want to change the pitch of the musical instruments before recording your sound. To do it, press CTRL+A (select all) and go to “Effect”->”Change Pitch…”. For example, to lower it you might select from “F” “down” to “E”. Note that the instruments will have a lower quality and sound unnatural if you do this.

MP3 export

OGG Vorbis is a free format while MP3 is proprietary so you should prefer OGG Vorbis when possible. In cases where using MP3 is a must (such as to play on MP3 players) the supports can be easily enabled.

First download LAME MP3 encoder for your operating system. Then extract the compressed file somewhere. After that go to “Edit”->”Preferences…” and open the “File Formats” tab. Press “Find Library” and browse for the requested file (e.g., lame_enc.dll for Windows). With that, you can export to MP3 from “File”->”Export As MP3…”.

Closing

I won’t give an example exported file here. Just have fun, but remember to respect your friend’s ears.