DS4OERS/Audiographic/Fade music

In this section you will find an openly licensed music track, suitable for an introduction to a voice recording and practice how to fade in and fade out the track using Audacity.

Where to find an openly licensed music

As you know, most music will be copyrighted as "all rights reserved", so you cannot copy an audio track of your favorite artist for inclusion in a teaching resource. Therefore you need to find music with an open copyright license. There are a number of websites that host music with Creative Commons licenses you can download and remix when generating a teaching resource. Below, we provide a few options.

• The Free Music Archive (FMA) - Check that you are searching the Creative Commons collection of music on the FMA website. If you don't see a Creative Commons search filter, you are on the wrong section of the site.
• digCCmixter is a website operated by ArtisTech Media that hosts music with Creative Commons licenses. Many tracks are licensed with the Non-Comercial (NC) restriction which you need to take into account when licensing your derivative work. If you would like to use tracks with more permissive licenses, you must search by applying the filter "free for commercial use".
• Freesound is a collaborative database of Creative Commons Licensed sounds - a good source for sound effects. Remember to click on the appropriate link under the "licenses filter" section on search list page.

Fade in and fade out using Audacity

Screencast - Fading a music track

Mini-challenge

Find music track and edit in Audacity for introduction clip

Purpose: Find a suitable, openly licensed music track and fade-in and fade-out the volume using Audacity for inclusion in your audiographic project.

1. Visit a free music repository (see list above) and search for an openly licensed music track to include in your audiographic project.
   • Remember to note and save the title, author, source URL and license for proper attribution in your final project.
2. Open Audacity, and import the file by clicking on: File --> Import --> Audio
3. Complete the editing tasks:
4. Reduce the length of the audio track to between 8 and 10 seconds maximum.
5. Fade-in the volume over about 1 and a half seconds
6. Fade-out the volume over 2 ti 3 seconds.
7. Save this as an Audacity project (.AUP file), so you can edit it later if needed.
8. Export the project as an audio file (for example, .MP3, .WAV, or .OGG (an open source audio file format)) for later use when completing your audiographic project.