Audacity Garageband For Free Music Loops

Simply navigate through the dozens of choices, click a file to preview it, and then drag the file onto the timeline.

As part of my departments growing interest in podcasting as a means for delivering educational content, my dean, Dr.

Bill Riffee, recently asked me to investigate both Audacity and GarageBand, two popular pieces of audio production software.

Both of these programs provide a relatively easy way to create audio files that can, in turn, be used for podcasting purposes.

NOTE: This article does not provide instructions on how to podcast but gives an overview of each tools feature set as it relates to audio production.

I listen to a lot of educational technology podcasts, and its often the case that people use Audacity to create their programs.

The fact that Audacity works on both PCs and MACs and is very intuitive makes it extremely popular.

The record and play buttons are very large, the timeline is easy to navigate, and the audio is easy to edit.

Audacity allows you to work with a seemingly limitless number of tracks.

You can record sound with a microphone or import audio files, such as music or sound effects.

Audacity also includes a variety of audio effects to increase production value (noise removal, normalization, equalizer, click removal, echo, bass boost, etc.).

It would be nice if you could just downloadinstall Audacity and not have to worry about an additional plug-in to create MP3 files, which is the one thing most people want to do with Audacity.

To avoid confusion or frustration, training materials related to Audacity would just need to include the steps for downloadinginstalling the LAME MP3 Encoder.

I did struggle with some aspects of the installation, however.

The process of installing the software on a MAC was different (and a little more confusing) than the process for installing it on a PC.

I found that I needed to refer back the instructions on the Audacity download site a couple times just to get the software loaded onto the machine properly.

I also had some trouble at first with getting Audacity to recognize my audio input source.

Once I overcame these minor hurdles, though, I was off and running.

These issues could be easily addressed in training materials.

The first track is me reading the first couple of paragraphs of Phil Keglers (2008) article, Gators offense puts up ridiculous number in wins.

The second track is the UF Marching Band playing The Orange and the Blue (retrieved from FightMusic.com ).

Audacity Garageband For Free Music Loops

The third track includes football sound effects that I downloaded from SoundSnap, which is a great resource for free music loops and sound effects.

Finally, I exported the project as a high quality MP3 file (320 kbps, stereo, 44 kHz).

Like Audacity, GarageBand lets you record sound with an external microphone, work with multiple tracks, add music and sound effects, editmix audio, and export projects to shareable formats (such as MP3).

However, GarageBand gives users much more flexibility and many more options overall.

Once you record a track or add a pre-existing audio file to a track, you can easily assign preset audio effects such as Male Radio, Female Radio, Megaphone, Gospel Choir, Ambient Vocals, and so on (the list is extremely exhaustive).

Within each of these preset effects, you can also make manual adjustments to achieve the exact sound you want.

Audacity Garageband For Mac