Audacity

When I first learned I was taking a music technology class, my first thought was, “Oh no, not again!” I took a music technology class when I was an undergraduate student and really did not like the class. I felt the professor moved too fast and used only programs for macs (I use a PC so MAC programs didn’t help me at all). The programs we used were all programs that you had to pay a lot of money for and I was a poor college student! In addition, I just thought I wasn’t that good at the technology. I realized, when I first started taking this current course, that I really actually do enjoy music technology. I am finding many ways to incorporate technology in my elementary music classroom. From Band-in-a-Box to SmartMusic to incredibox.com and soundation.com, I really thought I was getting the hang of the technology! Unfortunately, I felt a little snag this week. We worked with Audacity. Audacity is a free program that allows you to edit music. That sounds like a dream come true! Unfortunately, I had so many problems while working with this program. Every time I tried to copy a selection of my song, I would try to highlight the portion and it would end up moving things all around instead. I would press un-do and it wouldn’t un-do what I did. I was getting easily frustrated with this! In addition, when I finally did get the selection highlighted, I would press control+copy, because it’s just a habit I have in order to copy things, and I would go to paste only to find it didn’t copy. So I would have to try to highlight the portion again, and once again I would have trouble with it moving things around, and then use their copy button instead. I was getting easily frustrated with the program. However, I can see many benefits of the program! There are many times I wish I could edit a song we are using for a concert or in class and there is no way to do it. The experience I have with editing music comes from my undergraduate music technology course which utilized very expensive programs. To find a program that is FREE and allows you to edit a program is really very handy! I am impressed with all the tools Audacity provides you because it is free! In addition, we learned about a couple other programs as well this week. Band-in-a-Box and SMARTMusic are programs that allow you to plug in chords to create an accompaniment. They allow you to choose from many different instrument types to play these chords. They are not free programs, but they aren’t too expensive either. Both are just over $100.00 to purchase. If you are like me and can’t really accompany very well, this program will be very beneficial for you! As a vocalist and flute player, I have a hard time accompanying on the piano. I didn’t start piano until my undergraduate degree and even then, my hands are so small, I can’t play an octave! So finding programs like this that aren’t insanely expensive is amazing!