Audacity Tip: Previewing a Cut

Audacity is a fantastic free audio editing tool which allows you to carrying out editing tasks quickly and easily.

If you ever need to chop out a verse or other section of a song, you can do it easily in Audacity by highlighting the relevant section (drag the mouse across the blue wave) and pressing delete. The section disappears and you can check your handy-work by playing back the song.

But what if you’d like to listen to a preview of the cut before you press delete? Try these steps:

1. Select the part of the song you’d like to cut out. You can click-drag your mouse over the relevant section to select it.
2. Fine-tune your selection if necessary by hovering your mouse at either end of the selected area. You mouse pointer will turn into a hand and you can click and drag to adjust the size of the grey area.
   

   

   Fine-tune your selection

3. To listen to a preview of the cut you’re about to make, press the letter C. Audacity will play 1 second of the song before the cut, and 1 second after the cut – as if the selected area is not there.
4. If you like what you hear, press Delete. The selected area will disappear and the two remaining sections will join up automatically.

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