Audacity is a small, open-source, freeware sound editing and recording program available for Windows, OSX, and Linux. It can be used for editing existing audio files or for simple track-by-track multi track recording. I've used it before to edit or change the bitrate of mp3s, but until this weekend I had never tried to use it for multi track recording. But, I had nothing to do on Saturday, and since my sister was out and about I took the opportunity to play around on my guitar a bit. As I sat there playing, I suddenly wondered if I could record using the cheap mic that came with one of the last headsets I bought. So I sat down and did just that.

This is the result, not a terribly great result, but a result nonetheless. I didn't do any retakes, so there are more than a few mistakes and flubs. Also, the mic was distorting horribly on much of the recording, which accounts for the clipping and distorted compression you hear.

Technical Info: 36 seconds in length. Five guitar tracks (unless you count the artificially doubled main part for the fourth mix) consisting of one centered, rhythm guitar track, two hard-panned, capoed versions of the same guitar part, two hard-panned lead parts (one with heavy reverb, one with light phase), one track of me patting the back of my guitar like it was a bongo, one track of me shaking a large can of salt (recording this track made me miss you and your egg shaker, Rachel), and one bass-boosted, down pitched track of me pounding the back of my guitar to create the kick drum/djembe effect.

The Testing Song - Mix 1 - Full Mix
The Testing Song - Mix 2 - Cleaner Mix
The Testing Song - Mix 3 - More Minimal Mix
The Testing Song - Mix 4 - The Staggered Mix