How to Edit Music

When making music, it can be difficult to get all the different instruments and voices to sync up perfectly. Someone might have played a little faster. The drummer might have been half a beat off. Whatever the reason, there are so many different reasons why there is a need to edit music. Depending on your resources, you might want to get an expensive program to edit music. However, for simple music editing, check out a program called Audacity. It's a free program that can handle most music editing that you need done.

The first step when editing music is to import the file to Audacity. What this will do is convert it from MP3–or whatever format you've decided to use–and put it into the Audacity format to edit. Once it's been imported, it'll appear on the first line with wave lengths. These wave lengths determine how loud and soft the music is going to be when played a consistent volume. High spikes means that the voice is going louder or softer. Pay attention to these because you don't want too many spikes. It reduces sound quality.

If you want to add something in the middle of the song–such as a solo–you'd import that file into Audacity so it was a second line. Then, copy and paste the entire second music file and select where you want it to appear on the first file. Hit the paste button and it'll insert itself there. So, when you play, you'll have that solo appear at that point in the song and then, after the solo is done, it'll pick up where it was cut off.

However, assume you recorded the guitar, drums, voice and bass all at different times. You'll want to combine the four tracks to make one song. Import each individual file and then have them play over each other. Cut out parts that are causing the song to slow down and once everything lines up, you'll be done editing the music so that you can export it to a CD.

Go to file, hit export and then it'll appear in the format you want it to appear–MP3 for many. Copy that file to a CD, put it into a player and then enjoy the newly edited music. All you need to download is Audacity and editing music becomes very simple.