Final song preparation in Audacity

[64Guitars]

This is something that I've been planning to do for years. Well, I finally got around to it today.

Many BR users export their final mix from the BR and upload it to Songcrafters without finishing it off properly. It's important to normalize the levels and trim the ends of your songs before posting. Sometimes, you might want to fade the ending or even the start too. And you should always fill-in the MP3 metadata to give yourself credit for your work. Otherwise, people might download your song and, months later, forget who did it. Or they might give your song to friends or associates who have no idea who wrote it and performed it. So always fill-in that important information before you export your song to MP3. Most MP3 players will display the song title and artist from the file's metadata, and other data can be found by looking at the song's properties.

Anyway, I've created a detailed tutorial that describes how to use Audacity 2.0 to normalize, trim, and fade your final mix, then fill-in the metadata and export it to an MP3 file, ready to upload to Songcrafters.

I hope everyone will go through the full tutorial on their next song project so they'll know how to do these important last steps.

To view the tutorial, point to Guides in the main menu at the top of the page and select Home Recording. Then click "Audacity", then "Final song preparation in Audacity".

I hope it helps.

[Oldrottenhead]

Many BR users export their final mix from the BR and upload it to Songcrafters without finishing it off properly.

that'll be me 

[cuthbert]

Excellent guide! Thanks for posting this, 64G.

[Farrell Jackson]

Excellent Audacity tutorial on final song prep 64! I do these things but you've shown me a couple of short cuts that I'll be using in the future.

Thanks!

Farrell

[na_th_an]

Great document!

A good masterization really makes the difference. A song is not finished until you equalize, trim, fade and normalize it properly.

I use a somewhat old version of Izotope Ozone (version 3) to do all my mastering. I tend to boost the loudness but being careful of not losing dynamics. I also use band compression and exciters, and a nice EQ to refine the rough edges. I know Izotope gives away old versions of Ozone from time to time - you should give this a try. It's incredibly easy to use it and the controls are very intuitive so you can just experiment and trust your ears!

EDIT: Ozone current version is v5, but you can still buy v3 for cheap: http://www.allercheap.com/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage-ask.tpl&product_id=96&category_id=8&vmcchk=1&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=1

[galestermusic]

64G I'm so glad you did this! "Hinges" and "Swamp Cooler AC Redo" was done this way what a difference!