Audacity Tour

Welcome to Audacity. The purpose of this tour is to make new users familiar with Audacity's interface. When Audacity is first loaded, the main window appears. (It may look slightly different depending on your operating system:)


The Audacity main window, version 0.95

To get some sound to work with, you can either record a new sound, or open an existing sound.

Once you have recorded or opened a sound, you can begin working with that sound as a track. In Audacity, each track is like its own little window, with its own menu, title bar, and close box:

To make changes to the sound, you will want to use the Selection Tool. With this tool selected, click and drag inside the track to select part of the audio. You can listen to your selection by pressing the Play Button or pressing the spacebar.

Once some audio is selected, you can make changes to it similar to the way you would change text in a word processor or graphics in a painting program. In particular, you can cut, copy, and paste audio just as you would expect. To apply effects, such as fading in or out or applying reverb, select the audio you want changed and select an effect from the Effect menu. Remember, if you don't like how it sounds, you can always select Undo.