Tutorial: Audio Editing with WavePad
NOTE: This tutorial is graphic intensive with many screen shots from WavePad. Please be patient as it loads the first time.
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When you begin adding sound to slideshows, you very quickly decide you want to edit the audio by adding music, amplifying your voice, getting rid of background noise, or other audio editing activities. To modify audio recordings, you will need an audio editor. One of the best free ones out there is WavePad by NCH Swift Sound.
WavePad is a full-featured professional sound editor for Windows that lets you create and edit voice and other audio recordings. With this software, you can cut, copy and paste parts of recordings together and add effects like echo, amplification and noise reduction. WavePad works as a wav editor or mp3 editor, but it also supports a number of other file formats, including vox, gsm, real audio, au, aif, flac, ogg and more.
The program is designed to be very easy and intuitive to use for audio editing. Within minutes you will be able to open or record a file and edit it. WavePad is offered for free in the hope that you will like it so much you will be tempted to upgrade to WavePad Masters Edition. However, you are in no way obligated to buy the Masters Edition.
After you download and install WavePad, you are ready to begin having fun "playing" with your audio files. You will only be as limited as your creativity.
Before you begin using WavePad, be sure that you have a microphone hooked up to your computer. You can use one of those combination headphone and microphone headsets for your audio recording and audio editing work. Sometimes it helps to have headphones because they will eliminate outside interference and distractions.
When you open WavePad, you will see the following window. Take a look at the various buttons with features you will use for your work. In the lower left corner, you will see the recording toolbar that you will use when narrating. The only buttons that are "live" at this point are: New File, Open File and the round Record button.
When you are ready to begin, select New File by clicking on the New File icon. If you want to open an existing file, click on the Open File icon.
You can play with other options later, but for now leave the default settings. Click on OK.
A new file called
Untitled 1
now opens. Note the
recording bar at the bottom left of the open window. The
red button is what you will be clicking when you are ready to begin
recording.
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Step 2: Using the Audio Recorder
To begin recording, click on the button with the Red Dot. A recording screen will appear, and recording will continue until you push the Stop button (the square black button).
You will notice
that the green bar moves back and forth as you speak, indicating
that recording is active.
When you stop recording, a black bar with green "squiggly" lines appears. These indicate the high and low points of your recording track. You may listen to what you have recorded by clicking on the Rewind button or on the Go to start button, then on the Green arrow button to play what you have recorded.
At the bottom right corner, you can see how long your recording is so far.
See a description of the function of each of the buttons below.
At this time, you may continue recording by clicking the recording button again. Continue recording until you are finished. Don't worry if you stumble while you are recording. You can edit these errors when you get to the editing portion of WavePad.
When you have finished recording, close the recording window by clicking on the red X at the top right corner of your record control window.
Your recording will now show up as an untitled selection on your WavePad work area.
If you want to add or insert recording later, you are always able to do so.
If you want to add recording within your track, click on the sound file in which you want the new recorded material to begin, then click on the red Record button. When you are finished, close the record window. You will see your new recording highlighted in blue.
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Step 3: Navigating the Audio Editor Buttons
Now
it’s time to have
some fun as you learn to use audio editing software.
After you close your Record Control window, you will see a window that
contains your recording. It will be called Untitled 1. This window
will show the voice track that you just recorded.
The beauty of this software is that you can easily edit what you have dictated - adding, deleting or making other changes as needed (or wanted). The buttons on the editor work the same as the buttons on the recorder. You can hover your mouse over a button if you are not sure what it does and a description will appear.
Let's step slowly through
some of the editing features.
If you want to hear what you recorded from
the beginning, first click on Go to Start
(Home) button
,
then on Play 
.
If you want to start listening in the
middle of your recorded voice, click in the middle
of the window, then click Play .
You will hear the recording beginning at the yellow line running vertically
across your audio recording.
If you want to just play a section,
highlight a section by clicking, holding down the mouse button and then dragging
your mouse to the right or the left, then releasing.
When you press Play ,
only the highlighted section will play.
To remove the highlighting, click the Go to Start button or the Go to End button
or just click anywhere in the window.
Now, notice two features at the bottom right.
Sel Length tells you the length of the clip you have
highlighted, and File Length
tells you the length of the entire audio file. Knowing this information
can be helpful when you start editing and mixing music. It can also help you
when you are trying to use a fair use copyright clip and need the clip to be an
exact length.
Another feature tells you where the
clip you have highlighted starts and ends.
Before you begin playing with your clip, note the VERY HELPFUL button at the
top--the Undo
button. It will save you grief later, so get to know it
well, along with its accompanying Redo button.
When the “Select Wave File Format” prompt appears, choose
CD Quality because it will give you the
best sound, then click on OK.
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Let's try experimenting with some of the
fun effects. Notice the bar above your clip. You can click on any of
the effects from this bar - or you can choose
by
clicking on File and then clicking on the effect you want to use from the
drop down menu.
For most of the effects, you will be given
an opportunity to
Preview, then stop. Use this opportunity to "play around" before
you click OK, so that you can see what
the effects will do. If you click OK and do not like what you hear or change
your mind, use your Undo button to go
back to the way it was.
You can also look at the Presets
for more options. Don't be afraid to explore - if you accidentally click
OK before you are ready, go to your friendly Undo
button to start over.
While the echo is probably not one of the
effects you want to use for narration, it
may be an effect you want to use later
when you are working with music. The echo effect in the Living Room, the Cave
and the Grand Canyon all make for very different sounds - try them out to become
familiar with the differences.
For the chipmunk effect, go to Speed and Pitch Change and use about 200.
Some of the effects are especially helpful in improving the quality of your audio recording. In the top menu bar, go to Effects>Noise Reduction>Apply Auto Spectral Subtraction.
You will get a screen that allows you to Silence to Audio proportion. Decide what percentage you want to use, then click on Apply to Voice, then click OK. This is where some of the experimenting comes in.
Next you will get a
window that allows you to control the degree of sound removal. Click on drop
down menu
in
Select Preset and select
Remove Hum and Hiss. The noise gate level determines how
much sound is removed. This is where you have to experiment. If the level is
too high, too much sound is removed and you lose some of the voice recorded. Now
experiment.
You can choose how much you want to amplify your recording by clicking on one of the presets or entering a percentage in the Amplify Gain box. You can amplify the entire track or you can select a portion of the track and apply the effect. Again, this may take some experimenting before you get the sound that you want.
Hint: Sometimes you may find that you have to amplify a track to double or triple volume before you remove the hum and hiss so that you retain all the voice in the track.
Another nice effect is the Normalize to Optimal Level tool. On the Effects sidebar, click on Normalize to optimal level. You can now choose a Preset level to make your audio very soft, soft, normal or maximum. If you do not want to use a preset level, you can enter a number for Normalize Peak Level. If you have some parts of a recording that are soft and some parts that are louder, this will make the recording approximately the same level. This tool increases voice levels before you remove hum and hiss and is helpful if the recording you made is not loud enough.
Spend some time trying these effects and some of the others until you get comfortable with all the changes. Some of the other effects such as echo, fade in, fade out, and reverb are used more with music than with voice recording.
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When you play the music,
you will now notice that it nicely fades in before beginning. Most music that
you download will fade in and fade out. So if you are using the entire piece
(do you have full copyright permission?), you usually do not have to fade in or
out.
This effect is helpful when you have taken a clip of a song and rather than having a jarring entry or an abrupt ending, you may want to fade in or fade out. Also, if you are using a selection of songs (a medley) for your project, you will probably want to fade songs in and out so that your piece does not sound so choppy.
The CrossFade tool 
allows
you to mix together voice and music in a variety of different ways. You can, for
example:
Note: This tool is available in the Master's Edition of WavePad available for around $70.00. However, keep reading for information on duplicating the effect with the free version.
To use the Master's Edition tool, first select the region of audio you want to perform the crossfade on. If you want to crossfade between two files, you must combine the two files together first into one file. Next, go to Effects menu > CrossFade. A window will appear, showing a graph and a number of data fields.
The graph is divided into two sections, the top section shows the fading in part
of the audio, the bottom shows the fading out. The area that the crossfade is to
be performed on is highlighted in blue, and surrounded by markers showing the
start and end of the crossfade region. There is a one second portion of the
waveform on either side of the highlighted section, which is there to provide a
better view of the crossfade.
If you hover your mouse over any part of the graph, you can see what parts of
the graph correspond to what time in the audio waveform.
You can duplicate the same effect that the CrossFade Tool creates by first using the Fade Out tool on highlighted area followed by the Fade In tool on an adjacent area.
Your task: Try playing with fade in and fade out, cross fade, echo, reverb, and other tools so that you can begin to understand how they affect your audio tracks.
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You will now begin mixing music and audio. One thing to understand is that this is an experimental process when you are first learning to mix music. In fact, even after you are a "pro" you will find that each piece that you mix will need tweaking. So be prepared to experiment a bit before you get the "mix" to sound exactly like you want.
First, open a music file by clicking on File, then on Open File, or click on the Open File icon
.
If you are using Windows XP, most of
your music is stored in My Documents>My Music
by default. WavePad will import a variety of music files including the most
common - wav, mp3, aif, and ra - among many others. 
Once you have loaded a music file, you will see both audio files open. There are two ways to determine which file is active or currently selected.
The recording and editing controls will function on the file you have currently selected. You can tell which file it is by the color of the top bar. The bright blue color indicates the selected file. In the example above, streaming_media_narration.mp3 is the selected file; thus, this is the file that will be affected by the control buttons.
There are also buttons below the audio tracks that name the two files. The
selected button is in; the nonactive track buttons are out.
To mix the
music file onto the file you recorded, do the following.
Select the music
file you will be adding as background to the audio file you recorded file by clicking anywhere
on the music file.
Hold down the control key and hit the letter "A" to highlight the entire
file; then, without releasing the control key, hit the letter "C"
to copy the entire file.
Click on the beginning of the audio file you want to mix. Now, click on Edit > Paste Mix. A window will then open.
This series of steps allows you to mix a
narrative track and a music track - so that you have music playing in the
background.
If you are satisfied with your sound, then you are ready to save. In this case,
use File>Save As so that you can retain
the original files in case you want to change the background music mix later.
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