How to record voice, beautiful music and just plain noise on your computer

Introducing what may be a new computer program that you may want to have in your computer. It has an appropriate name for those who are not afraid to make a bit of noise when they feel like doing so. It is called "Audacity," and it is an audio editor. In fact, it is described as being a fast, multi-track audio editor and recorder for use on computers using the Windows, Mac, Linux, and BSD operating systems. Audacity is another fine "Open Source" piece of software. Because of that, it is a collaborative production, constantly being upwardly revised by volunteers, and, in addition to its being a piece of very professional work, it is free and downloadable over the Internet.

Well, I said, "introducing" because it was new to me. I heard about it from somewhere on the Internet – from a place that I have forgotten in my excitement to see what it was all about. When I got to Sourceforge Audacity was waiting for me to plug it into the search bar. By then, I was too excited about finding the thing to remember where I learned of it. Typical Redneck to forget things!

It turned out that there were 19 different Audacity-named downloads from which to choose. Being of limited attention span or imagination, I picked the first one on the list, Audacity, which turned out to be audacity-win-unicode-1.3.12.

I learned that I could make simple voice recordings using my old five-dollar microphone and play them back on a pair of speakers that have survived from the days of my very first "Windows" computer system. Times have changed since the days of that limited capacity computer, but the speakers still do their thing OK. But then I learned that I could take all sorts of existing recordings and play around with them, editing their sounds, mixing them up together, and combining good stuff with bad stuff as well as putting good stuff with good and bad stuff with bad.

The downloadable manual said that Audacity’s features included "envelope editing" (something I have yet to decipher), mixing, built-in effects (like thump-thump-thump...), and plug-ins (meaning cooperative pieces of software that expand the repertoires), plus unlimited "undo." That unlimited undo thing is great for folks like me who don’t know much of anything about audio mysteries.

I got into Audacity just far enough to record a short "Howdy" message for you. On my computer system it plays back using "iTunes," but from what I have been told, most audio playback programs can handle MP3 files, so that is what I chose to use in saving the "Howdy" test file on one of my little Web sites,

It took only a few minutes to download Audacity, to install it into the computer, and to figure out how to use it (and abuse it as well). I am not sure what use I will make of Audacity as the days move along, but I will probably think of something. Be assured - it will not be vocalizing.