btherl
New member
Someone was asking me about this, so I decided to make a public post. I use Audacity 1.3 (beta) to record myself singing, and an SM58 mic that plugs directly into my audio card.
To make a similar setup to mine you need to do this:
1. Download and install Audacity 1.3
2. Install the LAME mp3 encoding library (see Edit -> Preferences -> Import / Export in Audacity for options to do this)
3. Use the mic monitor in Audacity (in a drop-down menu under the microphone picture at the top) and your sound card software to get the mic levels to a nice level. How this is done depends a lot on your particular computer.
Once all that's done, I use the following procedure for recording:
1. Plug in mic (important step!)
2. Switch on mic monitor in Audacity and check levels (Also tells me if mic is not connected properly)
3. Click record and sing
4. Click stop and edit out silence from start and finish (and delete any embarrassing mistakes)
5. Use the "Normalize" filter to get the volume to a nice level (this may not work properly if you have pops in your recording from sounds like "p", as the pops are very loud, and cause the rest of the song to be softer in comparison)
6. File -> Export (and save as an mp3)
For sharing with others, the best place I've seen is box.net. Everyone on the other singing forums I visit use that. I use my own hosting though, since I have it anyway.
To make a similar setup to mine you need to do this:
1. Download and install Audacity 1.3
2. Install the LAME mp3 encoding library (see Edit -> Preferences -> Import / Export in Audacity for options to do this)
3. Use the mic monitor in Audacity (in a drop-down menu under the microphone picture at the top) and your sound card software to get the mic levels to a nice level. How this is done depends a lot on your particular computer.
Once all that's done, I use the following procedure for recording:
1. Plug in mic (important step!)
2. Switch on mic monitor in Audacity and check levels (Also tells me if mic is not connected properly)
3. Click record and sing
4. Click stop and edit out silence from start and finish (and delete any embarrassing mistakes)
5. Use the "Normalize" filter to get the volume to a nice level (this may not work properly if you have pops in your recording from sounds like "p", as the pops are very loud, and cause the rest of the song to be softer in comparison)
6. File -> Export (and save as an mp3)
For sharing with others, the best place I've seen is box.net. Everyone on the other singing forums I visit use that. I use my own hosting though, since I have it anyway.
