What?

Audacity lets you take audio from CDs, DVDs, online videos – in fact, any sound which your computer can play. Mixing these together is pretty straightforward, as you would expect. [N.B. always respect the copyright owner - e.g. recording audio from YouTube is illegal!]

Why?

After just a few minutes of playing, you can create the most amazing soundscapes or mix together music and voice into a professional-sounding podcast.

How?

To get sound which is playing on your computer into Audacity, simply change the recording device in the preferences box to ‘Stereo mix’. When you have a few sounds from different sources, you can start mixing them together.

Here’s an example of how to do this:

Next to add the music to the end of the podcast, mix the levels a bit and upload to Audioboo.fm:

The proof of the fake podcast on Audioboo.fm – not bad for 5 minutes work, really:

If you’d like to Creative Commons music to your Audacity project, this is the website I used - http://dig.ccmixter.org/dig It has loads of very professional music to download and use for free.

Be careful to check the specifics of the Creative Commons licence to make sure what you are doing with the music is OK and always credit the author in the way it states. Here’s the credit for the music in my example:

Be Brave Do It Right by blaxcot is licensed under a Sampling Plus.