Adding music to your podcast
Now that you have learned the basics of Audacity’s recording, editing, and exporting process, as covered in section 1 and section 2, it is time to help your podcast sound a little more polished and dynamic.
Many podcasts include music at the beginning and end of an episode, as well as during transitions between segments. These short musical interludes, usually 5-10 seconds long, are called “bumpers.”
As always, if you have any questions, or get stuck, as you work through these in-class exercises, please ask the instructor for assistance. Have fun 😀
Add music to your podcast track
We are going to add music in three places. We will start by adding introductory music, and then some transition music between audio segments. Finally, we will add the closing “outroduction”, or outro music.
We are learning the basics at this point, so do not worry if your music clips are not perfect. Once you get a feel for the process, you can always tweak things later.
Choose your music
Choosing music for podcasts is an art in itself. As a general approach to your introduction, closing, and transition clips, we recommend that you (1) keep it simple, and (2) keep it short.
Whatever music you end up using, be sure that you have the legal rights to do so. Websites that offer “free” music still often require some form of attribution.
Or, get creative with your own instruments! Even if you are not skilled at music, a little piano jingle, or ukulele riff, can sound great when used for short clips. And, since you created it, you avoid copyright issues altogether.
NOTE: see our Additional Resources page for links to “creative commons” media, including music.
For now, we will all work with the same MP3 file. But, once you learn the steps, you can repeat them using a track of your choice.
Let’s begin by downloading a free (and copyright free) MP3 file from the Pixabay free music website.
Download and prepare your music file(s)
Before we work with Audacity, we need to find our music and get organized.
Here are the steps to preparing your intro, outro, and transition clips:
- In a web browser, click on this link: No Copyright Music
- Download the file by clicking on the “Free download” (green) button and saving the file to your computer.
- On your computer’s desktop, create a folder called “Podcast Music.”
- Make three copies of your downloaded audio file.
- Move those MP3 file copies, and the original downloaded MP3 file, into the “Podcast Music” folder. Next, we will rename each copied file differently.
- Name your copied files as follows: “intro.mp3”, “outro.mp3”, “transition.mp3”. By the end of this, you should have four audio files: the original download, and your three, renamed copies.
Here’s an example of what your “Podcast Music” folder should look like:
Adding music to your podcast: process overview guide
Whether adding the intro, outro, or transition music, the overall process is the same in Audacity: you (1) import an audio file, to (2) create a new track, which you (3) trim, align, and fade as needed.
Here is an animation of the process for importing another audio file, in this case music (an MP3), into Audacity’s track window:
At the end of this process, you will have at least four tracks:
- interview
- intro music
- transition(s) music
- outro music
It is possible to merge your tracks into one. We recommend that you keep your tracks separate because this allows you to make changes to each track separately.
Having separate tracks will be especially important if you continue on with Audacity’s various effects and other features.
Even if you end up with multiple tracks, we will use Audacity’s export feature (as you did in the previous Editing and exporting section) to export your finished podcast as a single, mono, MP3 file.
TIP: before you begin any podcast project (or any sound-editing project) create a backup copy of your core, or main track(s). That way, if you ever need to, you can (1)remove the unwanted track, (2)copy your backup original file, (3)import the fresh copy of the original file, and start over.
Before you begin, know that you will likely have to adjust the alignment and volume of your music tracks, so that the tracks line up the way you want, and that the relative volume between the music and your interview audio is well balanced. We will discuss both scenarios, and more, in the next part of the workshop.
Note that what we do in the steps to add intro music—such as change the volume, add fades, and align the tracks—will also apply to the transition and outro music.
The following instructions assume that you have Audacity open, and that you have your interview, or main audio track, visible in Audacity’s track window.
TIP: no matter what changes you make in the following steps, remember to use Edit -> Undo (in the main menu), or CTRL (Windows)/ Command (Mac) + Z on your keyboard if you are not happy with the results.
Add intro music to your podcast
Here are the steps to adding intro music to your podcast:
- In Audacity’s main menu, select File -> Import -> Audio. Navigate to your file and select the “Open” button. You should now see two tracks: your interview track, and the “intro” track, as in the following example:
IMPORTANT: learn to use Audacity’s zoom feature as needed to see the tracks more clearly.
- In the “intro” track, use your mouse to click, hold, and drag to select all but roughly the first 8 seconds of the track, then hit delete on the keyboard.
- Still on the the “intro” track, use your mouse to click, hold, and drag to select the last few seconds of the trimmed “intro” track. Then, in Audacity’s main menu, select Effect -> Fading -> Fade Out—just as you did, earlier, in the Editing and exporting section.
- Click on the Skip to Start button and then click on the Play button to listen to your track(s).
Here is an example of my intro music trimmed and faded out. Notice in the waveform how the intro music looks like it’s fading down to smaller (quieter) as the interview track fades up to larger (louder). This is called a “crossfade.”
How did yours sound? Maybe you got lucky and it sounds good already. Bonus!
Do not expect things to sound perfect the first time. For example, the music could overlap your interview too soon or too late, or the volume of the music might overpower the volume of your spoken audio content.
Next, we will address the common issues in this process…
Troubleshooting your music tracks
Chances are you will need to tweak things to improve your track alignment, volume, or both.
Troubleshooting: track alignment
Problem: you have faded your music track the way you want, but it is cutting in too early, or cutting off too late, for the timing with your main interview track.
Solution: drag your main track into a better position:
- Hover your mouse over the top of the track (officially the “clip-handle drag-bar”) until you see a white hand icon appear. See image at right.
- Click + hold and drag your track, either left or right.
- Click on the Skip to Start button and listen to your the changes.
- Repeat steps 1-3 as needed.
Here is an animation of the click + hold and drag process in an Audacity audio:
Troubleshooting: track volume
Problem: your music is either too loud or too quiet compared to your interview, or main track.
Solution: use Audacity’s “Amplify” feature to change volume:
- To select the whole track, click on the top of the track (officially the “clip-handle drag-bar”). You will see the track turn blue, compared to the other track, which indicates that the track is selected.
- In Audacity’s main menu, select Effect -> Volume and Compression -> Amplify. This will open the “Amplify” window.
- Use the slider in the Amplify popup to increase or decrease the volume of your track, then click the Apply button.
- Repeat steps 1-3 as needed. Remember to use Edit -> Undo (in the main menu), or CTRL (Windows)/ Command (Mac) + Z on your keyboard if you are not happy with the results.
NOTE that you can apply the Amplify effect to any Audacity audio track. You can also select a portion, or portions, of a track and apply the Amplify effect. You can learn more about the Amplify effect in Audacity’s manual.
Add transition music to your podcast
The following instructions assume that you have already listened to your interview track, and that that you have picked at least one place to add transition music.
To interrupt our interview track with transition music, we need to make space for the music to fit in as seamlessly as possible. There are a few ways to approach this.
We could take the time to break up and save our interview into separate tracks altogether, naming each track differently, but this is needlessly complicated at this point.
We could also select a point in the interview track and use Audacity’s “Silence” feature to literally insert a duration of complete silence into the track. While this feature can be very useful in some circumstances, it can be a little frustrating while we are still figuring out exactly where we want our transition(s) to land in the track.
Instead, we are going to “split” our interview track into separate parts. Then, we will drag those parts, and our transition music, around until they sound right—just as we did in the “adding intro music” part of this workshop.
Here are the steps to adding transition music to your podcast:
-
In Audacity’s main menu, select File -> Import -> Audio. Navigate to your “transition.mp3” music file and select the “Open” button.
- Create 5 seconds of blank audio into the beginning of your voice track & fade intro music in & out:
- Grab the grey bar at the top of your voice audio track and drag it to the right about 6-seconds.
- Using the Selection Tool (see right) Select the first 3-seconds of the music audio (the background will turn white), and then on the top menu: Effect -> Fade in.
- Select the last 4-seconds of the music audio (the background will turn white), and then on the top menu: Effect -> Fade out.
- Copy and paste your music audio to near the end of the music track just before where the voice audio track ends (see below).
- Grab the grey bar at the top of your voice audio track and drag it to the right about 6-seconds.
- Lower the volume of the music intro and playout:
- The music is a bit loud, so let’s lower the overall volume by clicking on the Envelope Tool on the top menu (see right).
- Select the music intro audio track, then grab the white handle at the top of the audio wave and drag it down so that it looks something like the image to the right.
- Do the same for the music at the end of the audio track.
- Add a music bridge to your podcast:
- First find the region you want to add a bridge. This could be between two topics in your podcasts, before introducing a new speaker, or when you need suspension, etc.
- Put your cursor on the region you want to add the bridge in between. Right click, and choose split clip. This would divide your main track into half.
- Drag the second part of your track until you make a blank gap for the duration of your bridge. The duration of the bridge is up to you and could be different for every project, or even between bridges. Let’s say you want this bridge to last 8 seconds.
- Now that you have a blank region for your bridge, lets add some media (e.g., music). First add your desired audio file to a new track. You can do this by dragging and dropping the MP3 (or any other format) file of your desired audio to audacity. This would create a new track below your main track.
- Select 8 seconds of your audio file that you want to put as your bridge:
- With your mouse, select your desired 8 seconds of the audio file.
- Right click on the selected region and choose split clip. This would detach the selected region from the audio.
- Delete the other parts that you do not need.
- Drag the trimmed audio file and situate it exactly below your gap.
- With your mouse, drag the edges of your audio file one at a time, and extend the edges until your audio completely covers the bridge. The amount of overlap between your bridge audio and your main vocal track depends on you. Generally, a longer overlaps result in smoother transitions.
- Now its time for fading in/out your bridge audio:
- Select the left side of your audio up until the left edge of the gap, then on the top menu: Effect -> Fading -> Fade in.
- Select the right side of your audio from the right edge of the gap, then on the top menu: Effect -> Fading -> Fade out.
