Help me rewind Audacity when in the middle of recording (please)

August 24, 2011 2:11 AM

I am recording a list of names on Audacity. Usually, when I go wrong, I know I've gone wrong. I'd like to be able to rewind to where I was about to go wrong and re-record over the wrong one, rather than adding a new version of the name after the wrong one then going back later to cut out the mistakes. So the ideal: "Peter, John, Rabbit" [rewinds to end of John] "Robert, Paul ... " and I end up with a tape saying "Peter, John, Robert, Paul ..." rather than "Peter, John, Rabbit, Robert, Paul ..."

I am using a PC. Yes, the Audacity instructions probably do tell me somewhere, but I am not experienced with the terminology plus Mr LyzzyBee, who is more technical than me, couldn't find how to do this too. I know I've done this with other software when recording an audio book for a radio station ...

posted by LyzzyBee to Technology (2 answers total)

Best answer: I just opened Audacity and selected File->New; then I clicked the Record button, noting as I did so that moving the mouse over it showed me a tooltip saying "Record (Shift for Append Record)". I said "Peter, John, Rabbit". Then I clicked on the waveform display where I thought the gap between "John" and "Rabbit" was, then pressed the Shift and End keys together to select from that point to the end, then pressed the Play button to verify that what I had selected did in fact say "Rabbit", then pressed the Delete key to wipe it out; then I held down the Shift key, clicked the Record button and said "Robert, Paul." Played it all back and heard me saying "Peter, John, Robert, Paul." Seems pretty straightforward.
posted by flabdablet at 3:14 AM on August 24, 2011 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Marvellous - thank you!
posted by LyzzyBee at 5:37 AM on August 24, 2011