Audacity

Introduction
Audacity is a free, open-source, easy to use audio mixer and recorder. You can use Audacity to record live audio, to convert tapes/records into a digital format, to edit Ogg, Vorbis, Mp3 and WAV sounds, to change the speed and the pitch of recordings and the list goes on. And if all this was not enough, let me inform you that Audacity is cross-platform too! Take a look for yourself!
Audacity Installation:
You can download Audacity from the official website: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Let’s quickly have a look at what the installation procedure involves:

• Launch the setup and click “Next”
• Select the option “I accept the agreement” and click “Next” again
• Once again, click “Next”
• Select a location where you want the application to be installed and click “Next”.
• One more “Next”
• Click “Install”
• And now… “Finish”

That’s it! Now, let’s have a look at how we can use Audacity.

How to use Audacity:

First, you need to launch Audacity; go to:

Click on: Start->Programs->Audacity

Choose a language and click “OK”

Okay, take a deep breath; this is what Audacity basically looks like:

There are a lot of things going around so I think it would be best to take you step by step instead of explaining what each and every element does. I will show you how you can get only the part that you like out of a song.

• Go to File->Open
• Choose an audio file and click “Open”

This is what you should be looking at:

Now as you can see, above the song’s ‘diagram’ there is a bar marked with length checkmarks.

• Let’s say you only want to get the part of the song starting from 1:30 and reaching up to 2:00
• Using your mouse, select the part of the diagram that falls inside the 1:30 and 2:00 checkmarks; take a look at the image below, this is what you have to do:

• Now press CTRL + C in order to copy this part
• Go to File->New
• Press CTRL + V in order to paste the part of the song that you have selected and copied
• Press the Play button!

That’s it! You’re done! Now you can enjoy your creation and you can also save it by going to File->Save!

Final Notes
Of course, what I have demonstrated in this tutorial was just a simple, 2 minute tactic which helped me show you how easy it actually is to use Audacity. If you put more effort and take the time to learn Audacity better you will soon discover that although it is free, it is actually very powerful. With Audacity, there comes a time that you will probably feel that the only thing that limits you is your own imagination; that’s how powerful this software is and since it’s open source, it can only keep growing and become better!