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1. STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE TO
AUDACITY PRO-EXPERTISE:
AUDACITY TRACKS AND
CLIPS
Prepared By
SchulPortals Technologies Ltd.
www.schulportals.com
samuel@schulportals.com

2. Audacity Tracks and Clips
 An Audacity project can contain as
many tracks as you want.
 Each track can contain several audio clips which
can be moved around independently, but share
several properties of the track such as its overall
volume, panning, sample rate, and sample
format.

3. Channels, Tracks and Clips
 The terms channel, track, and clip can be a little
confusing, especially because some programs may
use them to mean slightly different things. Within
Audacity, the meaning is always consistent:
 A channel is for audio input or output. Audacity can
record 2 channels of input (stereo), and more if you
have a special sound card or audio device that
supports more than two simultaneous channels.
Audacity only supports 2 channels of output, no
matter what kind of audio hardware you have.

4. Channels, Tracks and Clips
 A track is like one instrument in your symphony, or one voice in
your dialog. You can have as many tracks as you want, and all of
them will be mixed together to create your final output, but during
editing you can manipulate each track independently.
If you have an interview that was recorded with two
microphones, each one can go in a separate track. If you have
background music, that could go in a third track. That allows
you to manipulate them separately before you mix them in the
end.
 A clip is a piece of an audio track that you can manipulate
somewhat independently from the rest of the track.
For example, you can split up an interview into sentences and
move the sentences around individually, even though they're all
from the same track. Less commonly, you can move clips
between tracks.

5. TRACKS
All audio files that are imported, or new audio that is
recorded, goes into a new track.
Afterwards, you can move, copy or paste audio into
existing tracks.
Many track properties can be accessed by clicking the
title of the track, near the upper-left corner, bringing up
a menu something like this:

6. TRACKS
The options in this
menu are described
here
Track Drop-Down
Menu.

7. STEREO TRACKS
Stereo Tracks contain a single label area to the left
with two waveforms on the right.
The top waveform represents the left channel and
the bottom waveform represents the right
channel, as in this example:

8. STEREO TRACKS
By default, the two channels of a stereo track are
always edited simultaneously.
However, you can split them apart and work with
them independently by opening the track menu
(see above) and selecting Split Stereo Track.

9. SPLITTING A TRACK INTO
CLIPS
When you record some audio or import audio from a file, you
get a single track. In many cases, there are natural gaps in
the audio - silence between sentences or pauses between
phrases in music.
Those are good candidates for splitting the track into multiple
clips, allowing you to manipulate the clips independently.
There are five ways to get multiple clips into a track:





Split in the middle of an existing clip.
Split Cut in the middle of an existing clip.
Split Delete in the middle of an existing clip.
Paste into an empty portion of an existing track.
Drag a clip from a different track.

10. SPLITTING A TRACK INTO CLIPS
 As an example, see what happens when you select Edit > Split, in the before
and after figures below.

11. TIME-SHIFTING CLIPS
To move clips around independently, use the Time
Shift Tool .
When you click on a clip and drag it to the left or
right, this is called time-shifting, because you are
changing the time that audio will be heard.

12. TIME-SHIFTING CLIPS
 To move multiple clips at once, select all of the clips you
want to move using the Selection Tool, then use the Time
Shift Tool to click and drag.
 If you click inside a selection area when dragging clips
with the Time Shift Tool, the selection area will move with
the clip as shown above. Otherwise, the selection area
will stay where it is.

13. TIME-SHIFTING CLIPS
If you click within the selection, all selected clips will move
together (see before and after figures above and below).

14. TIME-SHIFTING CLIPS
Note that moving clips also makes use of guides, also seen in the
chapter on Audacity Selection. When you move a clip, Audacity will snap
the left or right boundary of a clip to the nearest edge of a clip in any
other track, making it very easy to line up clips during editing

15. Moving a Clip Between Tracks
 The Time Shift Tool can also be used to move a
single clip between tracks.
 The Audacity project in the first figure below has
three tracks ("Sax 1", "Sax 2", and "Drums"). The
first track has 2 clips, the second track has no
clips, and the third track has 1 clip.
A clip can be moved from one track to another
simply by dragging it using the Time Shift Tool as
shown in the second figure

17. MOVING A CLIP BETWEEN TRACKS
NOTE: if a clip contains a selection area and you click with the Time Shift Tool within the
selection area Audacity will not let you drag the clip into another track.
To drag a clip containing a selection area into another track, either click in the track with
the Selection Tool to remove the selection, or click outside the selection area (but still