# Tutorial - Editing an Existing File

### From Audacity Manual

The easiest way to use Audacity is to open up an existing audio file and make small changes. If you've never used Audacity before, this is a great place to start.

## Step 1: Find a file to edit

Audacity can open many common audio file formats, including WAV, AIFF, and MP3. Audacity cannot open WMA files or copy-protected music files.

If you want to edit music that you have on an audio CD, you need to "rip" the music into an audio file. See Ripping from an Audio CD.

Don't have any audio files handy? There's lots of free music online! Here's one song you can download:

- Stay Away From Me by Joshua Morin

This recording is free, distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike license, which gives you the right to create a derivative work without paying royalties, as long as you give credit and make your derivative work free, too. This is similar to the license for Audacity, which allows any programmer to modify it and redistribute it for free.

## Step 2: Open the file with Audacity

Open Audacity. To open an audio file, you can select "Open" from the File menu, but a handy shortcut is to just drag and drop the file into Audacity:

Windows: Drag the audio file icon into the open Audacity window. | Mac: Drag the audio file icon to the Audacity icon in the Dock.

(Linux users: you can run Audacity on the command line and give the name of the file to open as a command-line argument.)

## Step 2: Look at the waveform

Talk about the relation between the waveform and the audio; just explain that roughly, when the waveform is "larger", the audio is louder, and vice versa. Point out the left and right channels. Talk about the ruler and how it shows you the length of the audio in minutes and seconds.

## Step 3: Listen to the audio file

Talk about the Play and Stop buttons. If you don't hear anything, see Audacity Setup and Configuration.

Introduce the Spacebar as a shortcut. Click on the waveform to choose a place to start, then press Play. Click and drag to create a selection, and then when you press Play, only the selection will Play.

Note that you can select audio entirely using the keyboard.

Introduce the Skip to Start button and its keyboard shortcut (the Home key on most keyboards? - please check this). It's kind of like Rewind, but it's not for playback, it's for

Introduce keys to skip around while listening.

Audacity has even more ways to control audio playback. For a more thorough description of all of the possible ways to listen to audio, see the section on Playing and Recording.

## Step 4: Create a 10-second clip

Introduce the idea of editing kind of like how you edit a word-processing document. Focus on Cut, Copy, Paste, and Clear. We're going to cut the document down to just 10 seconds or so.

Focus on the idea of selecting audio first, and then choosing the operation. Make sure this is clear.

Introduce the Zoom commands. Use the Zoom commands so that you can make maximal use of your Audacity window to see as much detail as you need, or to make sure you see the entire file when necessary.

Walk through deleting all but approximately 10 seconds of audio.

Introduce the Selection Bar at the bottom of the screen as an alternative way to do a more accurate cut.

Introduce Undo and talk about unlimited undo and redo.

## Step 5: Fade out the last second

Reiterate the concept of selecting first, then choosing an operation. In this case, we're applying an effect, but the idea is the same when doing a Cut, Clear, or Silence.

## Step 6: Export the resulting file

Talk about the difference between exporting and saving. Exporting allows other programs to open files, rather than just Audacity.

WAV first. Close and open the file. Always suggest a new name for the edited file, and keep the original around unless you're absolutely sure you can delete it.

Then optionally talk about exporting MP3. This is tricky because it requires downloading an extra program. Note that version 1.3.3 makes this much easier and we have new LAME installers.

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