How to Edit Audio in Audacity. How to create music.

• Audacity is a free and and open-source, cross-platform digital audio editor, recorder, and mixer.

It has many features. You can use it to: record live audio; digitize your old audiotapes, CDs, and vinyl records; cut, copy, splice, or mix sounds together, as well as, applying many filters, such as, changing the speed or pitch, adding echo or removing noise from a recording.

1. Import a file into Audacity: File, Import, Audio. Click the Play button to listen to the audio, then click the Stop button to stop it.
2. You edit audio waveforms in Audacity in much the same way as you would edit some text in a word-processing document. First, you need to select the text you want to change and then choose what you want to do with it: cut/copy the text, delete it, paste new text in its place, or change it to bold, italic or strike-through. You do the same thing in Audacity: first, select a region you want to change by clicking the left mouse button anywhere inside of an audio track, then drag until the other edge of your selection is made, and then release the mouse; second, you need to decide what you want to do with it. Just like editing a text, you can cut, copy, paste, and delete parts of your recording.
3. Delete everything except the selected audio: highlight your selection, and apply the trim by going to Edit, Remove Special, Trim Audio. It will delete any part of the file that is no highlighted.
4. Undo your last action: Edit, Undo.
5. Make the last second smoothly fade out: A. Click one second before the end of an audio track. B. Go to Select, Region, Cursor to Track End. C. Effect, Fade Out.
6. Increase Volume. A. Select the entire track: Select, All or highlight the desired selection. B. Go to the Effect menu, select Amplify, and try small increments, such as 5 or 10 dB. You can change the pitch (how high or low a sound goes; Effect, Change Pitch…), the tempo (Effect, Change Tempo…) or both (Effect, Change Speed…).
7. Use noise reduction. A. Get Noise Profile. Select a region of the audio track containing only noise. Go to Effects, Noise Reduction, and click on Get Noise Profile. B. Reduce the Noise: Select the region from which you want to reduce the noise, click on Effect, Noise Reduction. You can apply a variety of effects, such as echo (it repeats the audio you have selected again and again, Effect, Echo…), reverse (it reverses the selected audio, so that the end of the audio will be heard first and the beginning last), or distortion; generate noise (Generate, Noise…) or silence (Generate, Silence…), etc.
8. Truncate Silences. A. Select the entire track: Select, All. B. Go to the Effect menu, select Truncate Silence. C Threshold is the threshold (dB) to be treated as silence: -20 dB or -40db. Duration (seconds) is the minimum duration that will be treated as silence: 5 or 10. Action: Truncate Detected Silence (silences are shortened to the “Truncate to” duration).
9. Normalize your audio, i.e., adjust the volume of your audio files without affecting their dynamic range (the difference between the loudest and softer points of the track). A. Select the entire track: Select, All. B. Go to the Effect menu, select Normalize.
10. Export Audio: A. Go to the File menu, select Export, Export as MP3 (there is a trade-off between the size of the file and the quality of the encoded file)/OGG, etc.

• GarageBand is one of the best free software for music creation. It is a fully equipped music creation studio inside your Mac — with a complete sound library that includes instruments, presets for guitar and voice, and an incredible selection of session drummers and percussionists.

  It’s easy to learn, play, record, create and share your hits worldwide. You can use your instruments or you can create your own music using the virtual instruments and effects included within GarageBand.

• Cakewalk is a complete music production package, with creative songwriting tools and instruments, audio editing, advanced mixing (“achieve pristine pro-studio sounds and create big, clear, dynamic mixes with advanced mixing tools”) and mastering tools (“polish your finished mixes to perfection with built-in mastering tools”).

• Others: LMMS is a cross-platform open-source music creator or, more technically, a DAW (Digital audio workstation, an application software used for recording, editing and producing audio files). SoundBridge: Digital Audio Workstation, “We built a DAW for musicians with easy access to all essential tracking, sequencing, editing and mixing features.” Mix is a free and open source DJ software for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

• Solfege “is an ear training program written to help you train intervals, chords, scales, and rhythms.” It is free music education software and part of the GNU Project.

• Rosegarden is a music composition and editing environment based around a MIDI sequencer that features a rich understanding of music notation and includes basic support for digital audio.