I thought maybe some of you were curious about how I go about creating the audio files each week. Here's a little run-down of how I do it. I use an audio editing program called "Audacity." There are other programs out there, but this one is free and I'm used to it, so I can get through things more quickly than using another program.
Here's an image of last week's rehearsal audio file, as downloaded into Audacity, and then saved as an MP3 file, then re-opened into Audacity. You can click on it to see a larger picture. I've tagged the different sections of the rehearsal. There are two tracks because I record in stereo. Where the line is narrow, that's talking, which is quieter. The dark sections get wider as we sing louder. The numbers on top are minutes, adding up to roughly 2 hours of rehearsal.
My next task is to separate the rehearsal into single-song sections. I usually will eliminate most of the talking at this stage in my work after listening to it first, to make note of any important announcements, or notes about the songs that I will post in the "Song Notes" section of the blog.
Once I have the songs separated out, I will pull each one individually back into Audacity and edit them. Here is what "I'm Gonna Sing and Shout," which is the 4th song, looks like in Audacity. Again, you can click on the image to see a larger version. I've zoomed in (stretched it out) so that I can see where I need to make edits.
You can see where we stopped and started a couple of times to correct things. I have to splice those sections into one continuous version of the song. This is not easy, but, with practice, I have become pretty good at it. My goal is always to make the splices undetectable. Sometimes this is impossible, given that we often start without the regular accompaniment, and often we start out mid-song quieter than we originally were singing that section.
Once I get the songs all edited, I save them as individual MP3 files and upload them to my Google Docs cloud, then link to them on the blog.
How long does all this take me? Well, it depends on how many times we start and stop and how many songs we sing, but it takes a good portion of my Saturdays. Hours. Just so you know. At the beginning of the season we sing fewer songs, but have more starts and stops. Towards the end of the season we start & stop less, but sing more songs each week. So, it all amounts to about the same amount of work for me. I am happy to do this, as I believe it provides a very useful tool in rehearsing at home (or in the car), but please, appreciate and use it. You can make my editing job easier by learning the music so that Cory doesn't stop us as often. Just sayin.' :)
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