Create With Audacity

Image Source: Audacity

Audacity is a free software, used to edit and create music..

Growing up I have played various instruments (mainly flute, but also guitar, piano and altosaxophone). I have also joined a few different school bands in my life.

Image Source: Peter Marquardt

I used this program to try and combine my knowledge of music and apply it to technology

I have used technology to edit prerecorded music, but never to 100% generate a music piece from scratch.

I tried to recreate, and put my own personal spin on one of my current favourite songs, “A Million Dreams”, from “The Greatest Showman” soundtrack.

Like in the movie, I also attempted a duet rendition, with a third track on occasion.

I first I looked online to see what key the song typically is in, and found out that it was in the key G major.

I used this knowledge to try and search for a duet version of the song in this key. I came across this piece of sheet music and I based my creation on this score.

Image Source: 2 Flute Loops

First, I created three separate monotracks.

I was disappointed when I noticed that Audacity did not have a basic “keyboard” feature. So I had to get creative, knowing I wanted to generate sound clips one note at a time. I knew that each note has its own frequency. So I had to apply this knowledge.

Image Source: Physics of Music

I inserted each note into audacity individually. I did this by selecting “generate” and then “chirp”. Then I typed in the corresponding frequency to the note I was inserting for both the start and end. And set the time length of each note corresponding in accordance to what the sheet music suggests ( I did 0.25 seconds for all eighth notes, 0.5 for all quarter notes, 1.0 seconds for all half notes etc.)

Image Source: Screen Shot by Holly Marquardt, using Audacity

How I created my piece was extremely tedious, and even more time consuming… I spent HOURS.

I tried adding different effects to my piece (I literally tried each one out), but none really seemed fitting, most of them would just mess up the pitches of my notes. The only effect I ended up using was the “studio fade out” effect at the end of my song.

Overall, this is not the most ideal music editing/creating software, I have used quite a few programs that have much more functionality. But for a free software, I guess I can’t really complain.

I went a little overboard given that the instructions for this assignment was to create a 1minute clip, but I figured I would finish the song since I knew it would be something that I would still listen to even after this assignment was said and done.

I exported my creation as an MP3 and combined it with a picture and uploaded it to youtube.

Below is my creation. Enjoy.