To detach audio from a video file using Quicktime, follow these steps:
The file format will have an .m4a audio extension, and can be imported into an audio or video editing program.
The Transport controls can stop/start your audio in your timeline, forward and rewind, take you to the beginning of your project, among other tools
The master volume slider will increase/decrease the volume of your entire project. Ideally you want to have the audio’s loudest regions in the yellow regions, but not in the red.
Each track has individual controls to mute (make that track silent), solo (make all other tracks silent), as well a volume meter to view how loud the track is, and a volume slider to increase/decrease the loudness of an individual track.
Each audio track recording has a waveform, which is a visual representation of the audio. As your audio plays back, both the individual and master track volume meters will indicate how loud or quiet the audio is in your project.
Ideally you want to have the audio’s loudest regions (indicated by larger spikes in the waveform) in the higher green to yellow regions, but not in the red. Adjust the individual track volume slider so that most of the audio played back is in the higher green to yellow region, but not go into the red.
The playhead (the downward facing triangle connected to a vertical line) indicates where in your project the playback will start.
To zoom in and out of your timeline, click and drag on the zoom icon.
These instructions are for setting up a project for a podcast.
2. GarageBand will open up a new project similar to the screenshot below.
Close down several windows to focus on the main editing timeline. Choose View/Hide Library and View/Hide Smart Controls.
Each horizontal row is an audio track. Select the Bright Vocal, Fuzz Vocal, Telephone Voice, and Robot Vocal tracks, and hit the delete button. Your project should now look similar to the screenshot below.
3. Save and name your project. The default location will be in username/Music> GarageBand/; save to another location, if desired.
4. Drag a pre-recorded audio track (audio mp3, aiff, or wav file) onto this track.
If there are additional audio tracks, create a new audio track by going to Track/New Track with Duplicate Settings (command-d keyboard shortcut), then drag the audio track to the new track(s) you created.
5. Set your time view from Beats and Project to Time, which will give you an hour-minute-second view of your project.
After Setting up your First Project, you will want to review recording tips for the best possible recording, check your microphone settings, then start your recording in GarageBand.
You can use your internal microphone built-in to your computer, but it is recommended to use a USB microphone or an audio headset for any audio recordings; some are available at the PARC for checkout, or you can contact ITS@reed.edu for a short term loan if equipment is available.
Note: If you are using a USB microphone, go to GarageBand’s preferences and click on the Audio/Midi tab. Make sure your input device appears as your microphone, if it doesn’t show up, you may need to quit GarageBand, unplug and replug the microphone in, then restart GarageBand.
Either click on View/Show Smart Controls, use the keyboard shortcut B, or click on the Smart Controls at the top right of the GarageBand interface to access the Smart Controls panel. On the left is Recording Settings.
4. Click the Stop button to finish recording.
Headphones are a must when editing so you can hear the audio clearly. You can check out headphones at the PARC.
You may want to remove the beginning or end of an audio clip. Trim your clip’s beginning or end by going to the beginning or end of a track; your cursor will change to a bracket icon. Drag the audio to the desired area to trim.
To split a clip in the middle, move the playhead to where you want to split a clip. Choose Edit/Split regions at Playhead, or use the command-t keyboard shortcut.
Presplit clip:
Split clip:
To move a clip, select it and drag it to its new location.
Most times you will want to fade-in or fade-out the audio’s volume, to avoid any abrupt audio transitions. To do so, turn on automation; go to Mix/Show Automation, or press the “A” keyboard shortcut.
Your track will now look like this; volume is the default view (indicated by the dropdown menu). The faint horizontal line running above the waveform represents the current volume level of the track.
Click on the line so it turns yellow; click at the beginning of the track to set a control dot.
Click a little farther down the line to place a second control dot.
Drag the first control dot all the way down. This will start the volume from zero (inaudible) to the volume you have set in the second dot.
Press A to turn automation off.
Reverse the above process to fade an audio track out; keep the first dot at the original sound volume, and drag the second dot to the bottom.
Go to the Share/Export Song to Disk. Select Mp3 and High Quality (192 kBit/s). Click on the Export button.
Audacity is a free open source audio editing program developed for macs, pcs, and linux, and can be downladed at https://www.audacityteam.org/. There are plenty of help documentation online, but here are a few quick tips to get you started.
Quick note: If you are running Audacity on Catalina, you may need to read up on how to make Audacity work in Catalina. Ideally if you run this code in the terminal, Audacity will work:
open /Applications/Audacity.app/Contents/MacOS/Audacity
Audacity has a number of toolbars, but these are the most commonly used:
note: all toolbar images used from https://www.audacityteam.org/
There are a number of common tasks done when editing audio with Audacity. Here are a few of them:
Add an audio clip: Drag and drop audio onto Audacity’s interface. Mp3, .aiff, and .wav files usually are good. You can also choose File/Import/Audio.
Split: Edit menu/Clip Boundaries/Split
Trim a selection: highlight a selection that you want to save, the choose Edit/Remove Special/Trim Audio. (many options here!)
Move a track: Highlight the audio you want to move, then choose the Time Shift tool. Drag the audio to the preferred location.
Click on Mute or Solo on an audio clip’s track (indicated by the read arrow, at the top left on an audio track) to either mute it, or make it the only audible sound on playback. Mute/solo can be done on multiple clips.
Increase: You can either manually move the volume up by dragging the volume slider left or right (indicated by the red arrow, located just below the Mute and Solo buttons on the audio track). 
Or, you can choose the Envelope Tool, then drag up. 
The audio waveform should increase. If the clip is already at its maximum, highlight the clip, then choose Effect/Amplify. Drag the amplification slider to a larger setting.
Decrease: Choose the Envelope Tool, then drag down. The audio waveform should decrease.
Sound ducking: An audio term that is used when one temporarily decreases/increases the volume of one audio source so that another audio source can be heard more readily.
To get the highest quality (uncompressed audio file), choose Files/Export as WAVE signed 16 bit. Click OK on any warnings.
The Performing Arts Resource Center (PARC) in the Performing Arts Building (PAB) has added two Moog analog synthesizers to our continually evolving A/V editing room 327!
This technique can be helpful when needing to record a video of your screen for educational purposes when media is being played back on a browser.
After you’re done recording:
There are many media file types that exist for images, audio, and video. A file type that works in one situation make may not work in another. For example, an upload that you need to make might take .png files but not .tiff. Maybe the audio file you are trying to email or upload is too big and you need to compress it. Video files can be particularly problematic due to their size, or perhaps the software you are using accepts only certain formats. The number of possible file types and codecs (technologies for compressing and decompressing files) are seemingly endless and it can be daunting to keep track of this ever-changing landscape. If you don’t want to download multiple apps that facilitate different conversion tasks you can download Adapter and do most everything in one app.
Continue reading “Tool Talk – Adapter: a three-in-one media conversion tool”In this tutorial I am going to show you how to route your computer’s system audio output into a piece of audio recording software. Some potential situations that you would want to do this for would be as follows. What if you needed to record the audio from a Skype or FaceTime session? Or you wanted to do some creative re-sampling of a piece of audio? Maybe you want to record something from the web like Tone Generator (a frequency generation tool only available on the web), like a student and I did for RAW (Reed Arts Week) recently. You could also use it for a live situation where you wanted to capture everything you did on your computer.
Continue reading “Tool Talk: Soundflower for routing audio”Playing an instrument is an analog experience: a tangible act based in physical reality. Because of this, when instrument simulating apps (soft synths or virtual instruments) can use the touch paradigm available on iPads, musicians can find themselves having more of an analog experience with that technology. This is useful as music creation has traditionally started via an analog process: playing a string, wind, or percussion instrument, for example. Because of touch technology, the process of playing digital instruments is now able to become more seamless.
