This class is for high school students at Winnebago Lutheran Academy who want to learn how to make music on computers. We use Audacity and Garageband as our main tools, and we have fun almost every single day figuring out how to make music using audio and MIDI, but we also learn how to record vocals and instruments and even play guitar and drums if we need to.
We keep personal blogs (look on the right column of this page and click on our names) to help us remember what we've been working on, keep track of the all the decisions that we've made on our projects, and to share with our family and friends the music that we've created.
Export your Audacity project as a WAV file (Audacity: File>Export as WAV) and save it to your Music folder on your Macintosh HD.
Import that WAV file into iTunes (iTunes 8: File>Add to Library... or press -O).
Select it in the Music Library by clicking on it once.
Convert it to an MP3 file (iTunes 8: Advanced>Create MP3 version...). If it doesn't give that option under the Advanced menu, then go the iTunes' preferences (iTunes>Preferences... or press -,) and under the General tab select the "Import Settings..." button. Select "MP3 Encoder" after "Import Using", click "OK" on that page and the General Preferences page to get back to the Music Library. Select the WAV file you want to convert and choose "Create MP3 version" from the Advanced menu.
Find the newly created MP3 file in the music library. It has the same name as the WAV file, just a different file type. If you can't see the file type, turn on the Kind button under the View Options (View>View Options... or press -J) and look for the Kind column to appear in the Music Library. You may have to scroll the screen to see the newly created column. Drag the column header to the left so you can see it in the main screen without scrolling.
Select the MP3 file you just created and REVEAL where it is on the Macintosh HD by pressing -R at the same time. A window will open up showing that file.
Hide or move open windows (-H hides applications) so that you can drag the MP3 file you revealed into the Drop Box on your desktop.
Start writing your blog article about your project. I know you have been doing this little by little, so make this article a summarization of everything that is important about your song that you want your listeners to know about it.
While you are doing that, I'm uploading your files to my website so that you can link your song to your blog article.
Navigate your way to my website and drill down through the folders to find your song (from the Music Tech Blog: Related Links>My Website>Downloads>Music Technology>Semester 1 08-09>Dance Project 1>Dance Project 1.1).
Control-click on the download arrow to bring up a contextual menu. Select "Copy Link Location" from that list.
Go back to your blog article edit page. Click in the Podcast URL field and paste (-V) the link into the field. If you are done writing, select "Request Publishing" and send it off to me for approval.
Dale Witte is the choir director and music technology teacher at Winnebago Lutheran Academy, Fond du Lac, WI. He has been teaching since January 1990 and really enjoys teaching students how God's gift of music works. Dale is also a church organist, piano player, violinist, and church music composer.
