How to Make DJ Mixtapes in Audacity
Making a DJ-style mix tape involves seamlessly blending one track into the next, often maintaining the beat and tempo so that people on the dance floor never have to stop. Audacity, the popular open-source audio mixing software, provides several tools that allow you to fade in and out of songs and overlap them in ways that express your own personal style.
Other People Are Reading
Instructions
-
-
1
Open Audacity by double-clicking on its icon on your desktop.
-
2
Drop down the Files menu and select "Open," then navigate to the first track you want in your mix tape and click the "Open" button. Audacity converts the file to a wave form which it draws from left to right across the screen.
-
-
3
Drop down the Analyze menu and select "Beat Finder." Set the Threshold Percentage in the Beat Finder dialog box to 70 percent and click on "OK." Audacity creates a label track under the audio track, marking the major beats with a line.
-
4
Drop down the File menu and select "Import," then "Audio." Navigate to the second track in your mix tape and click on the "OK" button to import it.
-
5
Click on the second audio track, then drop down the Edit menu and click on "Select," then "All." Drop down the Analyze menu and select "Beat Finder," then "OK." Audacity inserts a second label track under the new audio track showing the beats as lines.
-
6
Drop down the Tracks menu and select "Sync-Lock Tracks." This ensures that when you move one of the audio tracks, its corresponding beat label track will move with it.
-
7
Click on the Time Shift tool in the tool bar, then click on the second audio track and slide it to the right until the end of the first track is just overlapping the beginning of the second track. Align the two tracks so that the beat label lines at the end of the first track and the beginning of the second track line up with each other.
-
8
Click on the Envelope tool in the tool bar; this causes blue lines to appear at the top and the bottom of the audio tracks. The blue lines are the track's volume "envelope." In the first track click on the envelope at about the point where you want the track to begin fading out. A white dot appears at that point. Create a second white point on the envelope at the very end of the first track. Click and hold on the second point and drag the point to the center line of the track. The blue lines converge, "squeezing" the waveform between them and causing it to fade to silence.
-
9
Create two points on the envelope of the second track, one at the very beginning and one where you want the fade-in to stop. Then drag down the point at the beginning of the track to make the two envelope lines converge.
-
10
Click the green Play button to listen to the resulting cross-fade. Use the Time Shift tool to adjust the positioning of the second track as necessary.
-
11
Import additional tracks into Audacity, creating overlaps using the Time Shift tool and cross-fades using the same procedure.
-
12
Drop down the File menu and select "Export" to create a new MP3 file with the mixed tracks.
-
1
Tips & Warnings
You may need to experiment with the Threshold Percentage in the Beat Finder to get it to draw consistent beat lines. If the percentage is too high Audacity will miss beats; if it's too high, it will interpret every loud note as its own beat.
The longer you want your transition between tracks to take the more overlap you should allow between the tracks.
Be sure to select each additional track before using the Beat Finder otherwise Audacity will map beats for all the tracks rather than just the one you're working with.
This procedure works best for dance tracks with a very pronounced beat; Beat Finder does not work well with quieter tracks.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit Thinkstock/Comstock/Getty Images
