Working with sound One Page Guide

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Introduction

This page helps you to use your computer as you would a tape recorder - to create and edit a recording.

Once this is done, you can distribute the recording to people via a web server (or Minerva) - delivering sound to them via the web - or send a student feedback that they can listen to. This approach can reach someone in a way that half a page of words does not.

Here's an example, a mercifully brief spoken word introduction to this topic. Further down the page, there's an example of the code you need to put this in place on a web page (though HTML5 will eventually simplify this):



You can make the link to your sound as an onscreen control (as above) or a word, phrase or graphic - the rainbow graphic is another example link.

You'll need to set up a chain of events for this, but each step is relatively simple, and the tools you need, you'll either have already, or you'll find that they're easily available. Among other uses, you can:

• Record an event, perhaps part of a seminar, and distribute it via a 'Minerva' course.
• Work as a group, creating an audio resource, and using this as a learning experience for everyone involved.

Using an Apple machine? Here's a link to a tutorial from Apple on creating Podcasts using Garageband.

What you need

Once you have the following, you'll find getting going with this a lot easier than it looks ...

Time

Plan for as much as two hours for the first time you put together a sound clip - you'll be learning a new set of skills. Once you know what's what, though, this will come down to minutes.

Food

Do take a break from time to time

A goal for this exercise

Recording entire lectures probably isn't the best approach ... Asking groups to produce short recorded presentations may be very rewarding though. The first attempt will take some time while you put things in order. Subsequently, this can be quick work. Try to include more than one voice if possible - a lone voice too easily comes across as someone ranting in a corner!

The hardware to record sound

You may have this already - many laptop computers will record sound - and many have a microphone 'Built in'.

The single biggest improvement you can make to your podcasts is a dedicated microphone/soundcard. One such that has been found to work well (2011 info) is a Samson Go Mic. This cunning little plan is a quality microphone and soundcard in one, it works with Windows and Macs, plugs into a USB port and has an output for headphones to make it easy to monitor what on earth is going on. This approach doesn't make sound totally straightforward - it does take out several potential kinks. (if you need a stereo USB mike, the Blue Yeti is known to work well)

The software to edit sound

Audacity: this sound recording/editing software works on both Windows PC and OS X.

Ideas

Over to you ...

Materials

Record your own, or download royalty free samples from various web resources, including the following:

• Incompetech for music samples: http://incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/
• Mean Rabbit for sound effects: http://www.meanrabbit.com/

What your audience will need

Many modern computers are able to handle multimedia - sound and video - but it is difficult for you to predict what experience students who visit your pages will have - it depends on the way that their computers are set up.

Many machines use the Apple software 'Quicktime' to handle sound files. You may field enquiries from your students as to how to get things working - and one response might be to redirect the students to the Student Open Access Computer Support people in the libraries on both sites ...

Many Smartphones will handle audio attachments to email without a hitch.

Audacity: Sound Editing Software

Audacity is open source software and therefore 'Free at the point of use' - and it's also easy enough to use that you'll be under way in a few minutes. You'll need to download and install it.

Exporting mp3 files

Because of patent issues, 'Audacity' cannot export your work in the mp3 format supported by many music players - but it's able to use another piece of software to create mp3 files effortlessly, (once you've installed that software). More information on exporting mp3 here.

Audacity, streaming sound, and OS X

On a Mac, Audacity is unable to 'See' sound that originates in other software - so it's not quite straightforward to record 'streaming audio' - sound from applications on the computer itself. You need to install something to work round this, here's more information.

When something turns out wrong

'Audacity' has a robust 'Undo' mechanism - you can undo several generations of changes to recover a situation.

Using 'Audacity' - an Overview

There's the knowledge base of an entire industry to be discovered here, but you don't have to bite off more than you can chew. Assuming your pc has a microphone attached, simple use of 'Audacity' is rather like using a tape recorder, but with several stages:

Start Audacity

You can use Audacity on both Windows and Mac pcs.

Record your sound ...

If you have a microphone, Audacity will hopefully have chosen it as the default sound source. If you're speaking and Audacity isn't listening, break off and check Audacity's preferences - look for what it's using as a default sound source.

... or open an existing sound file.

Open an existing sound file and 'Audacity' sets up an 'Audacity project' so that you can work with it. Audacity can also combine several sound files, if you're already running Audacity and have an existing project on the go, import an additional sound file from your disk space into it - or press the 'Record' button and add an additional recording, and you can then work with them both.

Save your work as an 'Audacity project'.

This won't give you something you can play on an mp3 player, but will enable you to return to your work later just as you can a word processed document - simply start Audacity and reopen the project.

Make edits if necessary

(see below) and save the changes

Export it as an MP3

This is straightforward once you've installed the encoder - which is also straightforward.

Audacity: getting going

Start Audacity and you'll see an empty window with menus and a toolbar that includes 'Tape recorder like' controls.

Use the red 'Record' button to start recording and you'll see a track appear, 'Audacity' will then look like this:

Once you've recorded something, the green 'Play' button will allow you to play it back. (At which point it's natural to wince at the sound of your own voice.)

Changing the sound input levels

The screenshot shows a track that's recorded at a good 'Amplitude' - the sounds waveform fills the available space so that the loudest part of the sound isn't quite clipped. If your own sound is recording at too low an amplitude, simply adjust the input level using the 'Input' slider control (it has a 'Microphone' icon to one side), adjust things so that the tops of the waveform aren't quite being 'Clipped' by the available space.

If you need to change the amplitude of something you've already recorded, 'Audacity' can do that too - read on.

Sound, Audacity, an Apple Mac, and OS X: a note

OS X uses technology called Core Audio to manage sound. This has advantages from a professional standpoint, but means that it can be remarkably tricky to record sound from the computer itself, as the machine as it stands doesn't contain tools to handle this task in a straightforward way.

Windows PC

'Audacity' usually has no problem in recording a sound stream once you've selected the source.

Apple OS X

You'll find that 'Audacity' or 'Garageband' will record from whatever's set up to be the 'Default source' with no problem - but that's likely to be the internal microphone with no other choices. One action to take is to install an application called Soundflower - that provides a feed of streamed sound and you can then select 'Soundflower' as an audio source.

If you still have sound problems in OS X:

VideoLAN or Audacity installed

Repair disk permissions using Disk Utility from the Utilities folder in 'Applications' ... use 'Finder' for this.

Sound - system settings

Use the 'Apple' menu at top left to check system preferences for your sound settings ...

Midi settings

You won't find these in 'System preferences' for some reason. Look in 'Applications/Utilities' for the 'Audio midi setup' application. Audacity, Videolan and Soundflower are all capable of breaking something here - allegedly. Check that nothing's set to more than 44,000 kilobytes per second ...

Using Audacity to edit sound you've recorded

Audacity can do much to change sound that you've recorded, we'll just stick to a few basic tasks here: this isn't too difficult and in some ways is a bit like using a word processor in that you often select something and then choose a menu.

First, though, record a sound and practice a few basic skills. Make a selection of a portion of a track. To do this, click and drag the cursor over the part of the track you need - its background will then be shaded and it will be selected.

If you need to expand or contract your view of a track, use the magnifying glass in the toolbar to zoom in or out.

You'll often need to select an entire track - simply click within it, and then on the keyboard hold the 'Control' key and tap 'A' as you would to select an entire 'Word' document.

Once you've selected a section of a track, note that you can play it using the 'Tape-recorder-like' controls. Alternatively, you can place the cursor within a track and play the sound from that point.

Once you've mastered selections within a sound track, here's some common tasks:

Change the overall amplitude of a recording, or a section of it

This is useful when your entire recording is around the same level, but too quiet. Mouse click on the sound within the track and press 'Control + 'A' to select the whole track. Then use the 'Effects' menu: choose 'Amplify' from this and the track will be amplified so that the loudest part fills the waveform and the rest is hopefully increased as well. If you've a long quiet recording with an 'Accidental' unwanted loud noise simply remove the loud noise first, see next

Replace a section with silence

First, identify the section you'd like to remove by selecting and listening for it. Once you have it selected, use the menu 'Generate/Silence' - useful for removing things like explosive coughs and sniffles.

If you then place the cursor at the start of the silent section, you'll find you can record something as a correction - 'Audacity' will lay this down as a new track, but when you export an mp3 file, the tracks will be combined.

Remove a section completely

Select the section and then use 'Edit/cut' for this ... it removes the selection completely, closing up the gap that would otherwise be left.

Add another track

This is useful if you'd like to add something like a musical jingle to the start of your podcast. Once you have the additional audio sample saved as a sound file, and you have 'Audacity' open and displaying your current project, import the additional audio using the menu 'Project/Import audio. You'll now see a second track with the additional sound file's waveform. It's likely that the sounds aren't 'Sequenced' correctly though - both will play at the same time. To change this, you'll need to align the tracks.

• Look at them both. Identify which needs to play first and which, second. If the track which is to play first doesn't start at the 'Zero point' it's usually a good idea to shift it so that it does. Move the cursor to the 'Zero point' and then select 'Project/Align cursor to track and that will bring that track to the start of the session.
• You then need to time shift the second so it starts after the first. Use the cursor to select in the second track the point at which it needs to begin playing.
• Then use the menus Project/Align Tracks and choose 'Align with cursor'.

Lastly, export your Podcast as an MP3

There's a menu item in the 'File' menu for this - but you'll need to have installed the 'LAME' encoder or you'll only have '.wav' as a file type ...

More help with 'Audacity'?

Audacity has helpful help pages - use its 'Help' menu button. There's also good help pages on the web, including a searchable Audacity forum.

Concluding your Recording Session ...

Awareness of when something's 'Good enough'

Editing sound files is very time consuming. Aim for something that's clearly audible - stop when your product is 'Good enough'.

Very basic knowledge of sound file types

You need to know enough about computers and sound to recognise sound files and know how to treat them.

Storing either images or sound on computers involve a lot of data, and you might already know that both can be stored in two ways:

Non lossy

Everything in the original resource is kept, nothing discarded, and the file can be saved over and over again, each save being a perfect copy. This approach may use a lot of disk space, but nothing is ever lost. Examples are tiff image file formats and the .wav sound file format.

Lossy

When the resource is saved just once, 'Unimportant' information is discarded - but repeated saves will chew away at the quality of the sound or image. Examples include .jpeg image format, and mp3 sound files.

'Lossy' compression is useful in that it can reduce file sizes to a tenth of what they might otherwise be, with little loss in quality. There's a trade off - this method offers a choice of compression settings, quality is traded off against files size, depending on the nature of the original.

While music recordings are easily damaged by 'Overcompression', speech recordings fortunately remain comprehensible even if compressed to within an inch of their lives.

When you prepare material and save it to a mp3 file you can set the file compression accordingly and the result will still be useable.

Feedback to Students: via an audio file

Record your feedback using Audacity as above and you can send it to a student as an email attachment. (You can send the email, with attachment, from within Minerva).

Web Pages: Linking to Sound Files

You can use a simple link

First, upload the sound recording itself to your web site. Once it's there, you can link to it from a web page, in the same way that you'd link to any other file or page:

Code like this:

will produce a link like this: cuckoo clock - select the link - the action will hopefully play the sound itself. (The sound file can usually be downloaded with a right mouse click too).

Inserting sound controls on your pages: using sounds with the <object> tag

An alternative is to provide a player control on the web page itself.

That code almost assumes that your visitors have 'Quicktime' on their systems. Paste the code into your page, and substitute your own values for the 'src', the 'id' and the 'type' fields among others - you'll need to replicate some of this in the 'Embed' section too ...

src

The path to the sound file

id

Simply give this a meaningful name to help you identify what sound you intend to play.

name

Set this to the same as 'id' ...

Other puzzling stuff

The 'classid' attribute looks hideous, but it's simply a long string identifying that the plugin will be the 'Quicktime' software. Quicktime needs a parameter called 'Autoplay'. Curiously, other plugins are likely to need 'Autoplay' substituted with 'Autostart' ...

Putting the music file onto Minerva

This is relatively simple - use the guidance for adding a sound file on my Minerva pages

How to download an mp3 and put it on an mp3 player

First, save the mp3 to your disk space - right mouse click the link to it and save the file. Then get it to your mp3 player in whichever way works ...

'Real Podcasting': a note.

This gets a bit techy, don't read this section for now as it's a work in progress. 'Podcasting' is a term often used loosely, but in its pure form implies that you upload the sound clip and link it in a way that will be recognised by podcasting software. It's then possible to make it available via software such as 'iTunes', (the word 'Podcast' has come about from a concatenation of 'iPod' and 'Broadcast'). This isn't as complicated as it sounds - the easiest way to build the script might be to use an online tool such as the following podcast script generator - this generates a string of xml code containing instructions to the podcasting software that you can then save as a file with the extension .rss and upload to a wweb server.

Using the online podcast script generating tool

Just fill in the form with the details of your podcast. Much is self explanatory: the 'Enclosure' items might puzzle you, but they simply refer to the sound file you wish to include in the podcast

• Enclosure title: needs a title for the podcast
• Enclosure description: a brief description of it
• Enclosure link: this needs a web link to the actual mp3 file

Once the online tool has produced the script, copy that and paste it as a new file using a text editor, then save it with the file extension '.rss' and put it on the web server.

Here's a link to the rss file. Select this in a web browser and the result isn't pretty - the file contains instructions as to how your podcast should be handled.

Check back for details of how to deploy all this ...

Guidance for your audience

When you provide sound samples, check for feedback to see how users are getting on with this. While some individual students will be able to proceed without further assistance, others will need support from peers. (Or help from you)

Awareness of the rights of others - e.g. copyright issues

Remember to use your own content freely, and other people's content only with explicit permission ...

Tips for Success

Storyboard it!

It's productive to start by spending a couple of minutes jotting down a pattern for your audio presentation - agree on a beginning, a middle part and an end, and doing a quick storyboard of ideas about how to get the ideas across effectively.

Sound effects

Introductory music, or even a distinctive or representative sound. This can be cheesy, but can also be effective as an introduction.

Duration

A maximum of seven minutes avoids sending everyone to sleep.

Different voices

A single voice easily ends up sounding like an unhinged individual ranting in a corner. Use two voices and this impression is largely dissipated ...

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'Rainbow Waves' image licensed under a Creative Commons License.