10 Creative Uses For Audacity That You Probably Haven’t Thought Of

You’ve probably heard of Audacity .

uses for audacity . It’s a free cross-platform application for recording and mixing, which also happens to be incredibly powerful and versatile. You can use it to record vocals, instruments and other sounds, mix them up into something useful and then create a music file to share. Many people use Audacity for podcasts or music mixing, but that’s not all it’s good for.

There are so many fantastic things you can do with a program as versatile as Audacity. So many in fact, that it’s possible that a few great ideas slipped by you while you were off doing other things. In this article, we’ll take you through some of the best ideas and give you a few pointers on how to get started doing them yourself. Download Audacityand let’s get started!

If you have any technical questions in regards to these ideas, you should be able to get good answers at the Audacity Wiki, or try asking on MakeUseOf Answers.

Multi-Track Music Recording

If you’re part of a band or a singer who performs with backing tracks, you’ll love using Audacity to record the individual tracks and pull them together as a final piece. It’s easy to get started producing home music recordings in Audacityand the end result can be quite professional once you start adding in effects to the individual tracks. Here’s a list of artists who have created their music with Audacityas the main tool – there’s some great examples to listen to!

uses for audacity

Podcasting & Radio

Since Audacity is the perfect tool for mixing several tracks together and fading in/out different tracks, it makes it the perfect tool for podcast or radio show creation. It’s very easy to fade-in a sound byte around some spoken audio or to add a catchy introduction tune. See this article to learn more about using multi-track recordings in Audacity.

audacity uses

Record Speeches, Audition Material, Adverts & Voice-Overs

Another few great things you can do when recording your voice using Audacity is to create adverts or voice-overs. If you’re a small business owner who wants to advertise on radio, you could create your own adverts. If you’ve got a fantastic voice, you could practise for voice-over roles and maybe create a portfolioto get your name out there.

audacity uses

Also, any students, best men or performers can use Audacity to record themselves doing their speeches, audition pieces or anything else which needs to be perfected. Hearing exactly how you sound will make you realise what you need to work on before the big day.

Recording Audio From Applications

There’s plenty of reasons you might like to record from applications: Maybe you’d like to record from Firefox, a Skype call or from a streaming radio playing on your machine. To do this using Audacity, you’ll need to ensure your sound card can do it. Ensure that you turn off “Software Playthrough” in your recording preferences, then simply click next to the audio source (default says “Microphone”) and choose “Stereo Mix” from the drop-down menu. This will allow you to record any sound that’s being sent to your speakers. Full instructions and guides to soundcards by operating system are here.

Practise Foreign Languages And Record Yourself

Anyone who’s successfully learned a foreign language will attest that you need to speak it frequently to get it right. But often it’s difficult to hear your accent as you say it, so the idea of recording yourself and listening to it later is a good one. This works doubly well if you record your example lesson or a native speaker at the same time so you can really compare how the words sound.

Create Audiobooks For Kids Or For Project Gutenberg

If you have a great reading voice, you could put it to good use by reading public domain books aloud and recording them in Audacity for audiobooks. Project Gutenberg has many public domain books which are yet to be recorded. It’s an ongoing project which anyone can help out with.

If you have small kids in the family, you could read kids books aloud and record them for everyone to enjoy as bedtime stories. There are plenty of public domain kids books you can read, which will mean you can upload and share them legally when you’re finished. Or do both and upload them to Project Gutenberg when you’re done!

Create Karaoke Backing Tracks

Karaoke is great fun, but sometimes you just can’t get hold of songs you’re dying to sing. As long as you’re keeping the file for your own entertainment only, it can be a good idea to create your own karaoke tracks. Yaara has written a step-by-step guide on how to create your own vocal-free karaoke tracks using Audacityif you want to try it.

audacity uses

Record Your Brainwaves

If you’re a musician and you just thought of a great new melody, you could use Audacity to record it. Or, if you have great ideas all day and just want to note them down quickly, this could be a great tool. Submit the audio to Evernote when you’re done and these recordings could be really useful later!

Make Cool Ringtones

Audacity can be used to create MP3 files, which in turn can be used as ringtones. So, it makes sense that you could conceivably find any cool sound effect or movie snippet and convert it into a ringtone. You could even use your own voice or record one of the littler members of your family saying something cute. If you’re into video games, Justin has found lots of game sound effect sites you can use to create awesome ringtones with Audacity.

Improve Reading Skills & Speech By Recording Kids Reading

Your kids will get better at reading by doing it more often, and they’ll be better at reading aloud if they practise that often too. So why not use Audacity to record them reading their favourite stories? Not only do they get great practise, but you could share the file with their cousins as a bedtime story and with the rest of the family just so everyone can enjoy listening to a cute kid reading a story. Note: Don’t make these recordings public as only books out of copyright will be legal to record.

uses for audacity

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10 Creative Uses For Audacity That You Probably Haven’t Thought Of

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