 Using GarageBand to edit audio. Besides creating and recording the audio content itself, editing your audio is arguably the most important step in producing a quality recording or podcast that your listeners will enjoy. These days, audio editing software, such as GarageBand, is available for free to Mac users with any level of experience. But knowing where to begin can be tricky if you're not familiar with these types of editing tools. In this video, you'll learn the basics of how to record, edit, and export audio for a podcast episode using GarageBand. When you first open up GarageBand, you'll see a pop-up window asking you what kind of project you'd like to start. GarageBand has a few templates to choose from here, but for the purposes of this video, we'll select Empty Project. This will open up GarageBand, along with a prompt to choose the track type for your first track, whether that's a specific instrument or audio that will be recorded directly into GarageBand. For our podcast, you'll want to choose microphone, and then select your input from the drop-down menu. This input will be whatever microphone you are using to record. Chances are, it will be automatically identified by GarageBand. When you have your microphone selected, click Create, and the basic track setup will appear on screen. By default, GarageBand is set up for music recording, so we're going to want to modify these settings for a podcast recording. The first settings we're going to change are at the top of the screen. Click on the metronome button to turn it off, as we're not really concerned about keeping to a specific tempo. Do the same to the Count In button, which is labeled as 1, 2, 3, 4. Lastly, we'll click the drop-down button on the main window of the top menu. We'll want to change this from Beats and Project to Time. This will change your timeline and menu from showing your key and tempo to a regular digital stopwatch to keep track of the length of your recordings. The next thing we're going to do is click the Library button in the top left. This will minimize the window, as you probably won't need to access the library while you're recording your podcast. The library feature on GarageBand is contextual. What you see depends on what you have selected. For example, if you have a guitar track selected, GarageBand will recommend different styles or effects that you can add to this track. You can always open the library up later by pressing the same button again. Now that the library is closed, you should just see your audio track that we created when we set up the empty project. You can double-click the title to change the name of the track. Click the Mute button to mute this specific track, or the Solo button to mute all the tracks except for the one you clicked on. You should also be able to see your audio levels here when you begin to record. In general, you want your levels to remain green. A little yellow is okay, but if they hit the red, you'll want to lower that level. Under the track, you can check your input or change it if you have a different microphone you want to use. From here, you can click File, Save As, and save this blank setup as a podcast template. This way, you have it ready for any future podcasts you make. Because we've created this template with the proper settings and input, when it's time to record on GarageBand, the process is very simple. Just hit the red Circular Record button in the top menu, or hit R on your keyboard. And as you speak into the microphone, you should see the levels moving in your track menu, as well as waveforms appearing on your timeline. Recording in GarageBand. To stop the recording, just click the square Stop button, or press the spacebar on your keyboard. If you want to record more than one person's audio at once, all you need to do is create a second track. Do this by clicking the plus sign above your first track. The same pop-up window will appear that we had at the beginning. You'll choose microphone again, but this time you'll want to make sure the input that is selected is your other microphone. Click Create Again and you'll have a second track. You can do this for as many inputs and microphones as your system can handle. In order for GarageBand to record both tracks simultaneously, there's another feature we need to enable. On the top toolbar, go to Track, Configure Track Header. A window will appear with a few check boxes. Click the one that says Record and Enable. When you do this, you'll see a record button pop up next to each audio track. Select this button on each of your tracks. When you see them flashing red, it means that all your selected tracks are ready to record simultaneously. To begin the recording, hit the main record button again in the top menu. You should be able to see waveforms and levels for each individual track on your timeline when the corresponding person is speaking. Recording two tracks in GarageBand. If you've got background music you want to use, or you have recorded your podcast in a different program, and you just want to use GarageBand to edit the recording, you can bring all your clips into your timeline by clicking File, Import, and selecting your chosen clips, or just drag and drop the files into the GarageBand timeline. Now that all your clips are in the GarageBand timeline, it's time to begin the editing process. Remember, you can zoom into your timeline at any time to edit more accurately by using the slider in the top right of your timeline. The first tool we'll explore is the Trim Tool. This tool you'll want to use if you just need to shorten a clip from either end. Say there's some empty space before you begin speaking. To use Trim, all you have to do is hover over the side of the clip you'll be trimming. Click and drag it to the length you want, then release the mouse. The next technique we're going to use is called the Split at Playhead Tool. This is the tool to use if you want to split your clips at all, or even cut something out of the middle of a clip. The playhead is the line that goes through all your tracks to indicate where you are listening in the timeline. Move this to the beginning of the section you want to cut out. Click on the track to select it. Right-click and select Split at Playhead, or use Command-T on your keyboard. This will create two separate clips from your original. From here you can move the new parts of your clips around by clicking and dragging it, which will leave a silent break between the clips. Or you can use the Split at Playhead Tool again at the end of your section you want to cut. Select the section you want to remove and just hit Delete on your keyboard. Then you might want to manually select the remainder of your clip and drag it to fill in the gap made by removing a chunk of audio. An easier way to accomplish this is to use a tool called Delete and Move. This will prevent you from having to manually move your audio around when something is deleted. Select a clip you want to remove, then click Edit in the main toolbar, then Delete and Move. You'll see this piece of audio you selected is removed, then everything to the right of it automatically shifted to fill the gap. Make sure if you have more than one audio track that you keep them in sync, otherwise your interview or conversation can sound awkward. So, if you're deleting sections from one track, hold Shift and select your other tracks to delete the same amount of time from them. If there's something you want to cut out of only one track, such as a cough while the other person is speaking, you can simply use the Split at Playhead to select a bit of your recording that is just ambient background noise and duplicate it by holding down Option on your keyboard while you drag the clip to its new location. This will preserve your timing without creating an unnatural silence in the recording. Another tool you'll want to use when editing your audio is the Automation tool. Automation in GarageBand is what allows you to manually adjust the volume of an audio track within itself, as opposed to editing the volume of the entire clip or project using the level sliders. To begin, just hit A on your keyboard. You'll notice the screen changes to a darkened version of the timeline, along with a couple more options in the track menus. Now if you click on any of your tracks, you'll see a yellow bar appear. This is the volume slider. Moving it up or down will increase or decrease the volume of the entire track. Or, you can click on various points along the yellow bar to set points to adjust the volume in a specific section. This can be helpful to increase the volume in a specific portion that your guest happens to get quiet, to equalize the volume of all your clips, or if you want to fade out background music when someone begins to speak. For example, we'll fade in our audio by clicking the yellow line at the very beginning of the clip. Then we'll do it again a few seconds in. Now we can drag the first dot down, and you'll see the yellow line is now at an incline from the beginning into the normal volume for the rest of the clip. Once you're satisfied with your podcast episode and you've made all the edits you want, it's time to export it. If you've been saving your project as you go, it'll be a GarageBand project file. These files can only be accessed within GarageBand, so that makes it difficult to share or upload. For these purposes, you'll need to export it as a common file type. To do this, navigate to the top toolbar and click Share, Export Song to Disk. Here you can name your file and choose where to save it. Then choose between file types by selecting one of the bubbles at the bottom, either AAC, MP3, AIFF, or Wave. The most common formats are MP3 and Wave. The difference here are that the MP3 files are compressed, which reduces the file size, making them easy to attach to an email or submit for a project while still maintaining a decent audio quality. Wavefiles are uncompressed, which reduces much better audio quality and subsequently a much larger file size. Once you've chosen your file type, click Export. You'll see the play heads grubbing through the entire episode while it exports. Once it reaches the end, you'll have your finished product. Of course, there are hundreds of things you can do with GarageBand, and only a few basic tools could be covered in this video. Once you're comfortable with creating simple professional podcasts in GarageBand, there are plenty of resources online to deal with even the most specific problem. Logging in with your college's credentials, you can check out LinkedIn Learning for some great tutorials, and you can learn more about telling stories using audio or podcasts on the Learning Portal's digital storytelling module.