This module will show you how to use the Audacity audio editor to take recordings that you have made and align them to create a single-speaker podcast episode with an intro, main content, and an outro.

You will be guided through how to use audio files containing individual parts of a podcast episode (extracted from Episode 1 of the Field Notes podcast, which is created by Martha Tsutsui-Billins and available under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license). Then, you will be provided with audio files from an episode of the Some Stutter, Luh! podcast, and you will apply your knowledge to turn those raw audio files into a complete, structured episode.

Note that each part of the tutorial can be completed with a mouse, or using only a keyboard. As a result, the instructions in this tutorial come in two sets: one that involves a mouse and one that does not. You can choose whichever option you find more comfortable, but for each set of steps, make sure to only follow one of the sets of instructions and not both (for example, if you are following the keyboard-based instructions for splitting a clip, don’t follow the mouse-based instructions for splitting a clip; instead, move on to the next part of the tutorial).

Podcast structure

When creating a podcast, it is useful to think about how each episode will be structured. Typically, a podcast will have an intro, main content, and an outro. Below, you can see what is often included in each of these sections.

Intro

The intro typically consists of music, optionally a preview quote from later in the episode, and a spoken introduction to the podcast and the episode.

A preview quote is a section of the main content that is placed at the beginning of the episode to give the listener a glimpse into what the episode will be about. Specifically, a preview quote consists of a short snippet of something a guest or a host on the podcast says later in the episode. Preview quotes are optional, and many podcasts do not have them, so you can decide whether a preview quote is something you would want to include in your episode.

In the spoken introduction, the host introduces the podcast, the topic of the episode, and the name and background of the guest(s) (if any). The introduction does not have to be very long and could be something like: “Hello, and welcome to the Example Podcast. My name is John Host, and today I will be talking about how to create intros for podcasts.”

Below is an audio file containing an intro that is a modified version of the intro from the first episode of the Field Notes podcast (you will notice that it contains music and a spoken intro, but no preview quote):

In the following intro to Episode 15 of the Some Stutter, Luh! podcast, you can hear music, followed by a preview quote, followed by a spoken introduction:

Main content

After the intro comes the main content. The main content could be a variety of things, depending on the nature of your podcast. It could involve:

• A discussion between two or more hosts
• An interview between the host(s) and one or more guests
• Reading out a pre-written script or essay
• A narrative format. In this format, there are clips of people discussing the topic of the episode. Interspersed between these clips could be a narrator introducing who the person speaking is.

In this tutorial, we will be focusing on creating a podcast episode involving a single speaker (the host), but the principles in this chapter are useful for creating media in the other formats as well.

Outro

After the end of the main content, there is generally outro music followed by an outro script that contains one or more of the following:

• Information about the podcast (such as websites where the podcast is available)
• Credits containing the names of the people working on the podcast
• Ways to contact the podcast producers
• Attribution for any media used in the podcast (this is necessary if you use any freely licensed media whose license requires attribution)
• Ways listeners can support the podcast

These elements are present in the following outro (which you will hear in the next chapter) from the Some Stutter, Luh! podcast:

Some Stutter, Luh! is hosted by Greg O’Grady. It is produced, recorded and edited by Paul De Decker, as well as Luca Dinu, who, by-the-way, wrote this jazzy theme music. Leah Bugden and Aleisha Meggison command our pages on Instagram and TikTok. Editing assistance was provided by the Labrador Languages Preservation Laboratory (or “Labradory”) at the Memorial University of Newfoundland. You can listen to or subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Anchor, and Spotify. Video versions of each episode are found on our YouTube page. Some Stutter, Luh! is a production of the Communication Collaborative. Thanks for listening!

Tutorial: Editing a podcast

Introduction

In this section, you will take raw audio files (mostly adapted from Episode 1 of the Field Notes podcast) and use Audacity to edit them together into a podcast episode. Follow along with the instructions on your own computer. The final result will sound roughly like this:

Shortcuts in Audacity

Before we get into the tutorial, it may be helpful to consider the following keyboard shortcuts that can be useful when editing in Audacity:

• Play/Stop: Space
  •  This will play the audio starting from the current cursor position (if the audio is not currently playing) or stop the audio (if it is currently playing)
• Split: Ctrl+I (Cmd+I on a Mac):
  • This will split a clip into two or more separate clips
• Delete: Ctrl+K (Cmd+K on a Mac)
  • This will delete what you have selected, and move the following part of the track backwards by the length of the part you deleted
• Copy: Ctrl+C (Cmd+C on a Mac):
  • This will copy what you have selected
• Cut: Ctrl+X (Cmd+X on a Mac)
  • This will copy and delete what you have selected
• Split Cut: Ctrl+Alt+X (Cmd+Alt+X on a Mac)
  • This will cut what you have selected, but unlike the Cut and Delete shortcuts, it will delete the section you have selected without moving anything else
• Paste: Ctrl+V (Cmd+V on a Mac)
  • This will paste the last thing you copied or cut
• Zoom in: Ctrl+1 (Cmd+1 on a Mac)
  • This will make the interface zoom in so you can make more precise selections and edits
• Zoom out: Ctrl+3 (Cmd+3 on a Mac)
  • This will make the interface zoom out so more of each track is visible
• Cursor Short Jump Left: Comma key
  • This will move the cursor backward by 1 second
• Cursor Short Jump Left: Period key
  • This will move the cursor forward by 1 second

You can find a more complete list of shortcuts by going to the official Commands and Keyboard Shortcut Reference page in the Audacity manual.

There are a number of shortcuts listed in the shortcut reference page that are not assigned to any keystrokes by default. Some of these are labeled in the manual as “Extra” and can be enabled by turning on the full set of shortcuts by going to Edit > Preferences > Keyboard > Defaults > Full, and then clicking OK. Other shortcuts are labeled in the manual as having no keystrokes because they must have keystrokes assigned to them manually in the Keyboard section of the Audacity preferences.

One shortcut that is useful but is not enabled by default is the “None” shortcut (which has the keystrokes Ctrl+Shift+A or Cmd+Shift+A), which deselects all tracks. It can be turned on by enabling the full set of shortcuts in the Preferences dialog. Alternatively, the same function can be applied without a shortcut by going to the Select menu and clicking None.

The intro/main content

In some podcasts, the spoken intro and the main content are separate sections of the podcast. However, in the episode in this tutorial, the intro and main content form a single continuous section. As a result, we will import two files: a file containing the main content (which includes a spoken intro) and a file containing intro music. You can download these files by clicking the links below:

Tutorial main content

Tutorial intro music

One way to import an audio file into Audacity is to click on the “File” menu in the upper-left-hand corner of the interface or press Ctrl+Shift+I (Cmd+Shift+I on a Mac), open the Import submenu, and click “Audio…” Then, you can navigate to the location where you have downloaded your file and select it. Once you have done this, you can import the file by either (1) clicking Open, (2) pressing Enter, or (3) double-clicking the file. Below is a video showing how to do this:

Alternatively, you can import the files into Audacity by selecting them in your file browser (Windows Explorer on Windows, Finder on a Mac), then dragging them into the tracks section of the interface, which is in the middle of the interface between the toolbars on the top and the toolbars on the bottom.

Each audio file that we have imported shows up as a separate track in the interface, as shown in the screenshot below:

In the screenshot above, the “Intro-and-main-content” track is above the music track because the tracks were imported simultaneously and therefore occur in alphabetical order. If you need to move a track up or down, you can open its track menu by selecting the track (by clicking on it or using the arrow keys), pressing Shift-M, and clicking on “Move Track Up” or “Move Track Down.” You can also move a track by pressing Shift, selecting the track control panel of the track you want to move (the track control panels are the boxes with sliders on the left-hand side of the screen), and dragging the track to the desired position.

Now that we have imported the files, we have to edit and align them. We can do so as follows.

The intro music is about two minutes and so it is too long to be left in the intro in its entirety. For the purposes of this tutorial, we will have it end after about 18 seconds, and we will take the rest of the music and move it to the end to serve as outro music. To do this, we will:

1. Split the clip in the music track into two clips
2. Move the second clip of music to the end in a new track to serve as outro music
3. Apply a Fade Out effect to the intro music

To split the clip in the music track into two clips:

To move the second clip in the music track to a new outro music track:

You have the option of renaming the new outro music track you have just created to something like “Outro Music” as follows:

To apply the Fade Out effect to the intro music:

Now, we need to move the main content so that it starts when the intro music ends. To do this:

Now, the intro music and main content are aligned (the intro music ends at the beginning of the main content clip), as in the screenshot below:

However, we are not quite done yet, since the episode still doesn’t have a spoken outro, and the outro music starts at the same time as the main content rather than at the end of the episode. In the next section, we will add the spoken outro and move the outro music to the end of the episode.

The outro

The outro will consist of a spoken outro, followed by outro music. Download the outro at the following link, and import it into your Audacity project:

Spoken outro

We can move the spoken outro to the end of the main content as follows:

Next, we need to (1) move the outro music so that it begins at the end of the spoken outro, and (2) shorten the outro music (it is currently almost two minutes long and so lasts too long after the end of the spoken outro). To move the outro music:

Now, the different sections of the episode are correctly aligned and occur in the order intro music > main content > spoken outro > outro music, as in the screenshot below:

(In this screenshot, the tracks look smaller because they have been collapsed. You can collapse a track by clicking on the black arrow in the lower-left corner of that track’s track control panel.)

However, we still need to shorten the outro music. To do this:

The outro music has now been shortened, but there are still two things left to do: apply the Fade In effect to the beginning of the outro music, and apply the Fade Out effect to the end of the outro music.

To apply the Fade In effect to the beginning of the outro music:

To apply the Fade Out effect to the end of the outro music:

The project will now consist of aligned clips in all the tracks, with a Fade Out effect applied to the intro music, and the Fade In and Fade Out effects applied to the outro music, as shown in the screenshot below:

Exporting the project

Now that you’ve finished editing the episode, it’s time to export it as an audio file that can be uploaded to a platform. To export the project as an MP3 file, go to the File menu, then to Export > Export as MP3. Type in the file name you want the audio file to have (e.g. “Edited podcast episode.mp3”), navigate to the folder where you want to save your file, and press the Save button or press Enter.

The final result

Congratulations! You’ve edited a podcast episode. You can check your work by listening to your audio file and comparing it to this audio file of the complete episode (which was also shown at the beginning of this tutorial).

Creating a reusable template

Following all of the steps above every time you want to edit a new podcast episode is cumbersome if each episode has the same structure. One thing that is useful to do to minimize the editing time required for creating future episodes is to create a reusable template. This reusable template will consist of any audio content that is shared between episodes, as well as empty tracks or spaces for content that is specific to each episode. This way, when you edit a new episode, parts of the editing process will already be done.

To create our reusable template, we can create a copy of the current project as follows:

The reusable template should include audio that is shared between episodes, but exclude audio that is different each episode. In this case, the shared material is the intro music and outro music, as well as the spoken outro. This leaves the main content as the part that should be removed from the reusable template.

We can remove the main content by deleting the track containing it. Open the Audacity project for the reusable template you have just created, and then delete the main content as follows:

You now have a template where most of the editing for the intro and outro has already been done in advance, such that for any future episodes, you do not need to apply any more effects.

Exercise

Below, you will find links to audio tracks for the different parts of Season 2, Episode 15 of the Some Stutter, Luh!  podcast. Download them and import them into Audacity.

Exercise main content

Exercise spoken outro

Exercise intro music

Align and edit the tracks to create an episode structured like the Field Notes episode in the tutorial above. Specifically, the sections of the episode should occur in the order intro music > main content > spoken outro > outro music, and the intro music should fade out before the beginning of the main content (the outro music is short enough that you can either have it fade out or continue to the end).

When you are done, use the self-assessment checklist below and compare your result to the audio file below the checklist.

This is an example of how the episode could be edited:

Troubleshooting

If you are editing a podcast episode and are using pre-made clips that consist of stereo audio (such as music from freepd.com) in your project, you may get the error message “Copying stereo audio into a mono track is not allowed” if you try to copy content from the tracks for those clips to non-stereo tracks within the same project. To get around this, you can convert the stereo track into a mono track by:

Attribution

• The intro, main content, and outro (though not the music) of the episode in the tutorial are taken from “Episode 1: Welcome to Field Notes!” by Martha Tsutsui Billins. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
• The materials in the exercise are adapted from “Interview with Paige Smith (Season 2 Episode 15),” which is by the Some Stutter, Luh!  podcast. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
• The intro and outro music used in the tutorial is “Hold on a Sec” by Bryan Teoh. CC0 1.0 Universal.