first, Really learn the program, hover over each button. go to help page, click on each button.

https://manual.audacityteam.org/index.html

that gets you past beginner.

Then pick a track you want to work on, (use audacity preference: make a copy while importing)

and Edit Undo a lot. try things out,

(when I learned to draw, my wife would ask, whatcha doin' and i would say , erasing)

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one pop during silence? selection tool that pop, effect, amplify, (-40 db that pop, and its gone)

(if you cut it out (scissors), track is shorter, but that can be OK, depending)

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audacity does not come with a deesser, but people have made them,

https://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=79278

installing a Nyqust plugin, gets you past beginner. (audacityteam help page)

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not all is audacity, if you record a bunch of noise, it could be easier to reduce noise, then record. (saves lots of time later fixing noise)

if its you, (mouth/breath) work on it, (YT videos)

This is an old-timer's point of view, and perhaps I'm not able to understand younger people using software as if it was some sort of magic.

First, I think you must understand what you're doing and get some basics on acoustics and audio encoding.

You can improve sound recordings in a spectacular way, but miracles don't exist. For instance, noise reduction is more or less paid for by some loss of data. You often have to choose the best compromise, or the least bad.

I'd also advise you to always use a headset when editing audio: it does not pardon any defect.

The online Audacity manual is able to bring you much information about the software, but I cannot access it to the moment to suggest you some important pages (I get an 'Access denied' error 1020 message...)

And feel free to ask the Audacity users community when you need.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl-WDjWrTtk&t=1s

^^I found this how to record and edit in Audacity tutorial from Pat Flynn, very concise and informative. Gives you most everything you need to know in 20 minutes. Check it out

Search up audacity tutorials on YouTube. They give you the basic tuts.

Then you can search about how to make your voice sound better in audacity. That will give all the stuff you need to learn how to edit audio and add effects.

Hopefully Boggum's link is useful! Just thought I'd drop in to say if you need any help or want to ask questions, feel free to reddit message me, and I might be able to help.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piuMLXF2rZY

I watched this video and was pretty much sorted after that

As everyone else is saying, YouTube is an excellent resource. Just pop the effect or feature you want to learn about into YouTube and someone has made a demo or tutorial about it. It's quite remarkable.

And then try it. The best way to cement the YouTube learning is to practice and use it in Audacity.

Do you need to use audacity? Would you not prefer using a trial version of a real DAW?

its not really a daw though.........i dont think.......so there may be some issues lol?

Audacity is good for audio editing and recording in general. There are full featured free DAWs out there that would be better for you to start in. Cakewalk and a DAW called Tracktion Waveform to name my top two. Also the website called VST4FREE is a good place to get free plug-ins. I would also recommend downloading the free audio effects bundle by MedIaProduction. Hope this helps

what DAW are you using?

Have you checked out Suno? Might be good place for a person like you to start.

Here's the best piece of advice you're going to get: have patience. Music production is highly complex and you have a lot to learn. You also need to develop skills that only improve with time and practice. The first few things you do are going to suck. Deal with it. If you stick it out for 6 months you'll probably be fine though.

Here is a good one: https://youtu.be/yzJ2VyYkmaA

If you need a more structured format, Larry Hudson puts on an Audacity course several times a year. Larry is a working voice actor, so he approaches it from that perspective. I believe his next one starts on January 10.

You can find him through his VO Heaven Workouts group on Zuckbook, or at voheaven dot com

Leave audacity alone and check out Reaper. Superior product and a TON of YouTube tutorials!

Audacity is a surprisingly powerful tool for certain applications, but you'll probably need a modern DAW if you want to efficiently mix and master anything.

It's not that Audacity is dated, but that it's not a DAW only a DAW by technicality because it is a "workstation" (disputed) for digital audio. Audacity is not meant for mixing and mastering music. It's meant for basic recording and edits. It only has rudimentary VST support—no support for instrument plugins at all, and no real time effect plugins. All effects have to be rendered. MIDI support is also extremely rudimentary, only allowing basic MIDI editing of MIDI files, no rendering or MIDI input/output with hardware.

For a starter DAW that's free-to-use ($60 to buy but the demo is unlimited), check out Reaper.

Audacity is ok for editing. Not so much for mixing and mastering.

You definitely need a DAW to mix and master properly.

You could even just use the demo of something like FL Studio. As long as it lets you export audio you will be able to mix and master relatively easily.

Yeah, that is an incredibly accurate description.

I highly recommend trying FL studio. Its the quickest and easiest to pick up IMO and best for beginners(Although a full DAW in its own right).

I take it you are already recording your stuff yourself in audacity?

You can either take those recording and import them into FL, or just use FL directly to record them. You can then set up each sound to have its own mixer channel and its own FX. Its a very "realistic" DAW in the sense its made to emulate working with the real hardware.

You'd be better off with something like cakewalk, which is also free, but allows you to set up busses for mixing and sidechaining fx.

You can also download tons of free and cheap vsts for more instruments and fx. If you head over to r/cakewalk and scroll around you'll find lots of tutorials that have been posted.

Get Reaper instead!

Not being able to afford Ableton, I am using Studio One 5 with a rent-to-own plan on Splice. 20$ cad monthly for a very powerful program, and after two years you own it. Recommend.

Best way to use Audacity for mixing and mastering:

1. Shut down audacity
2. Use a real DAW like Protools, Ableton, Reaper, etc

Check out this tutorial to get a nice overview of what you can do. He does a real nice job of breaking it down.

After that, dig a little deeper, and get specific on what you'd like to better understand so that you can mix, process and edit your vocals.

Hope you find it useful and keep on grindin Bro!!

https://youtu.be/HVOdwrDu76A

Udemy and probably other providers do online courses in Audacity. Maybe look into those.

So, not Audacity related, but I would highly recommend checking out Booth Junkie on YouTube. He offers a lot of tips about microphone technique, acoustically treating a room on a budget, and quite a few other things to help the home VO artist. Haven't watched him for a bit since the channel was just product reviews for a while, but his older stuff is super helpful.

I use audacity to record. As a precious poster has said, there are some great tutorials especially around volume levels and effects but I will admit to using Izotope for the final finish.

Start with anything from here and search for audacity https://youtube.com/musicradiocreative. Tons of videos

I've been using Audacity for a very long time, I can't say I recommend it for sound creation. It is possible, but not exactly intuitive. If you want to work with the limitations of making music with an editor, then go for it. It is much easier to use it as an editor - I use a hand recorder and edit files in Audacity, or I record a software synth directly to Audacity. Working with some sound files, you can then chop them up or whatever in Audacity. Carving out sounds by filtering noise is definitely one way to go, but even just a four "note" sequence like that in Audacity would be kinda painstaking. It's menu diving for everything, you could just push a button on a synth to do this. It may take a little while to figure out, but I'd suggest finding a free software synth and make music with that. I use Cardinal, which is a totally free version of VCV Rack. Modular synths have a learning curve but there's a ton of freedom to experiment. AMSynth and a virtual keyboard can also be interesting and is free. If you are dead set on making music with Audacity, I would at least get some audio samples to work with instead of relying on Audacity's noise and tone generators. BBC has a ton of audio samples available for free

Honestly laptop noise is hard to pull off. Filter isn't something that's super useful for noise. I would just buy some physical gear if you're a complete beginner to get a feel for noise.

You can get some interesting stuff using the raw data import feature.

Not to be negative, but I don’t actually think Audacity is a good place to start for a beginner. It’s fine for basic audio editing — and free — but very limited for music creation. That’s not really why I think it is bad for beginners, though. Its real problem, in this context, is that it is not a DAW, and therefore not really a gateway to a DAW. It’s nothing like true music creation software, which means when you want to go deeper, you are almost starting over.

I would demo some true DAWs and see what feels best for you (none are “better”…it’s just what works for you). Some may have free versions. Many will have “lite” versions that are good for beginners and modest cost. Sometimes those lighter versions are bundled for free if you purchase other things…like if you purchase a basic audio interface (if you ever want to get sounds from outside your computer to inside).

I'm not sure how possible it is in audacity because I've never used it/don't know what plug-ins you have available and I'm assuming you mean mixing and mastering but the general rule of thumb that I go for is;

1.Level every individual track until the whole song peaks at about -6db. Manually level the vocal using automation or by cutting it up and changing volume individually so that it's a relatively even volume throughout. This is so as not to overwork the compressor in the vox chain.

2. Add flavour effects such as reverbs, delays, saturation etc.

3. Reductive eq. Remove problem frequencies and carve out space for different instruments and the vocal etc. De-ess vocal if needed.

4. Compression. You want to do this after reductive eq and de-essing so that you're not compressing and therefore highlighting unwanted frequencies.

5. Additive eq if desired/needed. Boost certain frequencies that you want highlighted.

6. More/different compression if desired/needed.

7. Limiter on master channel to bring up volume to a commercial level.

There's no real right or wrong way to do things and I'm not a professional. If it sounds good, it sounds good but that's the general order I've learned to do things in over time. The more I learn, the more the technique evolves.

edit- don't read if you want actually good advice

Honestly, i just mix the track with the master channel turned to half and my headphone volume doubled, then export the entire track and throw it into audacity. then, i do a hard limit of however many decibels i have for headroom (usually it's like 6-7), then fine adjust until it sounds decent enough. it's not a professional method at all and i'm sure that most audio engineers would want to crucify me, but it works for what I need it to do. video example if i can't explain shit well

why dont you get fl trial, only problem is u cant reopen projects lol

Get Cakewalk. Free full fledged daw. You'll drive yourself crazy trying to do it all in audacity. I used to do that. certainly possible, but it takes a lot more time.