Editing Tips for Dance Teachers using Audacity

Hello There!

Today on the Fox Blog, I will begin my series on editing techniques to teach you! These tips will make your music sound better. I am using Audacity as a default program but these techniques are in all music editing programs. They take very little time and will improve your sound immensely. Today we are starting with the Cross Fade!

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How to Create The Cross Fade

One of the fundamental techniques of Audio editing is the cross fade. You never want your music to lose momentum. A Cross Fade is a good soft transition for lyrical songs and for any part that might just be too repetitive (like if they repeat the same 2 bar phrase 16 times for example). If done correctly you won’t even be able to hear it. When you have the two sections you want to cut together, make sure they are aligned to the down beat. This can be very difficult if there isn’t a hard attack on the 1 but a metronome can usually help with nailing that down. Once you have both Downbeats aligned you want to highlight both sections like so…

how to crossfade 1.jpg

After you select those sections, You want to go the dropdown menu “EFFECTS” and go down to “Crossfade Tracks”. Be sure not to select Cross Fade Clips as that only works if you are the same track line. We are using 2 track lines to make it easier to align that downbeat. Here is what this looks like.

how to crossfade 2.jpg

Once you Have selected that a window will pop up that will let you modify how quick or slow the crossfade happens. Let’s leave it on default and hit accept. After you have done that it should look like this…

You have now officially made a cross fade! Congratulations! This next section I will talk more about how to use one properly.

How to use the Cross Fade

The Cross Fade is a soft transition best used when blending one part of a song into a different but similiar part of the same song. I don’t think it works well to transition between songs, but that is ultimately an opinion. You ultimately want to transition smoothly by using this technique, so making the cross fade too long can be confusing and stick out. I recommend using the cross fade for 4 to 8 beats. I Will often use it to make sure that the same song isnt playing on 2 Tracks at once. When that happens it will become very loud but only for the time where both tracks are playing at once.

Ultimately it is a creative choice but now that you have learned how to crossfade your edits will sound significantly more smooth and hopefully your cuts will be Hidden!

I will be posting a new blog post every other week. Stay tuned for more techniques!

Thank you,

Corey Perdue

Corey Perdue