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- Be ready with a system for taking notes or even having Audacity up while you watch the video. For instance, you could have pen and paper to take notes one what the speaker is saying in both videos. Or, you could pause the videos at each point they explain one of the features of Audacity and then try it for yourself. I find the “pause and then try it out” method especially helpful in my own learning.
- Watch this first video in full (it is just shy of 12 minutes long). Two things to note are that the main menu bar where the cursor is and some other buttons (six buttons in total) will be at a different place than your interface (yours should be up top while his is more to the left) and this person made this video for YouTubers rather than podcasting—but it is the best video I found and still applies to us.
- Get used to the basics and take notes as needed (as well as try things out!). Getting used to the “play/pause” vs. “record/stop” is a thing it took me a while to get used to (e.g., would pause when I wanted to stop). Another thing to get used to is making sure you have the cursor highlighted when you want to highlight portions of the audio. Finally, the noise reduction tips are super helpful as is making sure to save the project vs. exporting as an audio file that you can listen to. Also, adding new tracks will be important for when you will want to add music or other audio files to complement speaking.
- Watch only the “Generate Silence” portion at about 3:15 and the “Podcast Music” portion at about 5:00 in this video. These are two functions that will be helpful to you as you strategically add pauses that might not have been there initially and to fade in and out of intros and outros (and to add music in general).
- As with the previous video, make sure you take notes and/or try things out as you go.