Audacity Tutorial: Music and Classroom Management, part 1

Developed by B. H. Giza, copyright B. H. Giza © 2005.

Texas Pedagogy and Professional Responsibility, EC-4:

TEXAS PEDAGOGY AND PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES (EC-4) STANDARD III

The teacher promotes student learning by providing responsive instruction that makes use of effective communication techniques, instructional strategies that actively engage students in the learning process, and timely, high-quality feedback.

National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers:

II: PLANNING AND DESIGNING LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS AND EXPERIENCES.
Teachers plan and design effective learning environments and experiences supported by technology. Teachers:

• E: Apply productivity/multimedia tools and peripherals to support personal productivity, group collaboration, and learning throughout the curriculum.

Texas TEKS §126.12.

Technology Applications (Computer Literacy), Grades 6-8
(5) Information acquisition. The student acquires electronic information in a variety of formats, with appropriate supervision.
The student is expected to:

• (A) identify, create, and use files in various formats such as text, bitmapped/vector graphics, image, video, and audio files;

Texas Technology Teacher Standards, Technology Applications for All Beginning Teachers

Standard II. All teachers identify task requirements, apply search strategies, and use current technology to efficiently acquire, analyze, and evaluate a variety of electronic information.
Application: What All Teachers Can Do
Teachers of Students in Grades EC-12
The beginning teacher is able to:

• 2.3s 2.3s identify, create, and use files in various appropriate formats such as text, bitmapped/vector graphics, image, video, and audio files;

The target audience for this activity is EC-4 teachers and prospective teachers.

The purpose for this activity is show how music and other sounds can be used to help in classroom management. Think for a moment, which strategy would be more effective with second graders? (1) Telling them that they have three minutes to put away their materials at the end of class (and constantly urging them with comments such as "We are almost out of time, hurry up now"), or (2) playing a three minute upbeat tune that has a pleasant, but predictable sequence? This activity is based upon the view that spending a little time in preparing the classroom environment has a tremendous payoff in classroom management. Music is not just motivational - it can be used for timekeeping in activities, without having to watch a clock. With modern computers (with speakers and media tools) a teacher doesn't even need to burn the music to CD! A teacher who is proficient in PowerPoint may simply import the appropriate sounds into a presentation, making it part of their standard lesson preparation approach (consider keeping a set of these pre-prepared PowerPoint slides in a special folder, importing the slide and its music into various lessons as needed).

The objectives for this lesson are:

• The teacher will be able to identify the differences between midi, wav, and mp3 format files.

• The teacher will be able to re-record a midi file to wav and mp3 format with Audacity.

• The teacher will be able to use Audacity to edit and filter digital sound in order to alter its length, pitch, and other qualities.

The materials for this lesson are:

• A relatively modern computer with an Internet (World-Wide Web) connection that has a sound card and speakers. (Modern is defined as capable of running Windows XP for Microsoft operating systems, Mac OSX for Apple, and Gnu or KDE version 2 and above on Linux).

• An installed version of Audacity software (available for Windows, Mac OSX, or Linux at http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download).

• Media-playing software that is capable of playing midi, wav, or mp3 format files (all three major operating systems have built-in players, although there are often other players installed). In Windows, Winamp, Media Player, or MusicMatch are all effective choices.
  Here is a LINK to a web slideshow that walks you through setting up Audacity in Windows.

• (Optional) CD-burning software and a CD-burner capable of producing an audio CD.

• (Optional) PowerPoint or a similar presentation product that is capable of importing and playing music files.

Steps. Let us assume that we want to create a three minute pice of music that we can play while our students are picking up their materials (crayons, paper, etc.) and putting them away (stacked in a box in one corner of the room) at the end of an art lesson. We want the children to enjoy this process.

• Step 1: Find an appropriate midi file online. (copyright cautions apply!) Download your midi to a location on your computer.

• Step 2: Prepare your play-record process with your midi player and Audacity's record system sounds function.

• Step 3: Record your midi into Audacity (save it and export it as a WAV or Ogg format file).

• Step 4: Edit your sound file (trim it, slow it down or speed it up, aply filters for pitch, etc.

• Step 5: Export your final file in WAV format for burning to CD (or playing on your computer, or importing into PowerPoint). MP3 format is another file export choice. (Only export a file in mp3 format at the VERY END of all editing, since mp3 is a "lossy" format, which loses a bit of quality with each save or export).

• Summing Up

Let's find some MIDI files in the public domain (meaning that we are legally authorized to download them, edit them, and play them in our classroom). We shall start with a public domain midi archive at http://www.mutopiaproject.org/. Licensing information for music on this site is available here: http://www.mutopiaproject.org/legal.html. For this demonstration I have chosen Bach's Fantasia and Fugue in G minor "Grand" (for some reason it makes me think of little people diligently marching around and doing something...like carrying boxes to a table). The zipped up midi file can be downloaded directly from THIS LINK. The music piece is just under four minutes long...and we want a three minute piece...what are our alternatives? (Possible solutions: edit the piece and use only parts of it, or speed up the piece and adjust its pitch so that it still sounds relatively the same).

Preparing our machine.

For the purposes of this tutorial, we shall use a Windows^® machine...but the concepts are similar on Macintosh or Linux machines. First we want to open Audacity and set it up to record system sounds. Then we want to open our midi playing software, and load our midi file. Start Audacity recording prior to starting your midi file...you may always trim out the "leader". On a Windows machine it is very easy to switch back and forth between open programs with the ALT+TAB trick (hold down the ALT key with your left thumb and tap on the TAB key with your left forefinger. Each time you lift your forefinger off the TAB key a different program is given "focus" (comes to the front of the screen).

Here is a little hint: Don't play your midi file too loud or too low - both extremes are potential sources of distortion...so play with the settings until you find something that sounds good on your machine. For the same reason Make sure that Audacity's recording level is not too high (too high also leads to distortion). Just keep it around 50%.

Record your music from midi to Audacity

Midi files are very small - they are simply text files containing a musical score in a form your computer can interpret and use to synthesize music...they are not actually sound files at all. Editing them would essentially require you to re-write them. Instead, we shall record them to a digital sound file and then apply filters and other adjustments until we have processed the sound file into something we like.

Simply (1) start Audacity's recording feature (the big red round button) and then (2) your midi player. Play your midi all the way through, and then stop it. Then (3) switch to Audacity and hit the "STOP" button. Now we have our recording, and we can manipulate it digitally. Close your midi player, and save your Audacity project. Once saved, you may export it in WAV format (we are saving it to make sure we can always get back to the beginning if we are unfortuanate enough to mess up).

Edit your music in Audacity

Once you have recorded and saved your music, you may apply an effect to it. In this case we shall speed up our file from around four minutes to three minutes (EDIT: Select: All, and then EFFECT: Change Speed).

Audacity's speed control has a nifty feature that draws upon the old vinyl record speeds to indicate what the sound might sound like - or choose percentages.

Converting from 33 1/3 speed to 45 speeds things up and shortens the music from four minutes to about 3...but the pitch is raised, and the tune sounds as though the Phantom of the Opera was playing it after he has consumed three expressos...

So now we lower the pitch slightly to take the fugue back nearer its original key.

Here are links to MP3 files that show each stage: (1) The original; (2) sped up (shortened); and (3) altered pitch.

Export your masterpiece as WAV (potentially a very large, but high-quality file type that is very compatible with import into other programs, such as PowerPoint, or sound editors), or MP3 (a compressible file type that is a much smaller file, suitable for web transfer, or playing in digital players). Once exported it can be burned to CD (it is better to use the WAV format for this, since it is truer to the original). OGG format is a relatively new, open-source format that has some of the best features of both WAV and MP3, but is not as well supported - yet.

Summing up: For more on recording Midi to MP3, try this link to a step-by-step web slideshow. A final hint: When importing a WAV or other media file into PowerPoint, make sure that you have saved the PowerPoint and the media file into the SAME DIRECTORY TOGETHER FIRST. Then when you import the file into a PowerPoint slide it will avoid the "absolute paths" error (PowerPoint will link a media file found outside of the presentation's directory with a link path like "C:\\\whatever\subfolder\etc" which will lead to it's not being able to find the media file if the presentation is moved to another location, e.g.: on CD or a flash memory drive).

Play your music in the classroom! Build up a library of appropriate tunes to enhance various activities!