Single Track 1: Your First Recording

About ten minutes. All you need is a microphone and something to say.

Sometimes you don’t need a whole production. You have one recording and you want it to sound right: a voiceover, a phone interview, a bit of narration. That is what Single Track Mode is for. Everything on screen is that one waveform, so there is nothing to get in the way. (If you are building a show out of several sounds, you want the Multitrack lessons instead; you can always move between the two.)

1. Start a New Recording

The question: Begin the new project in single track mode or in multitrack mode, with Single Track, Multitrack and Cancel buttons

There are two roads, and they end up in the same place.

From the Welcome Window: under Single track, click Record an audio file.
From the pulldown menu: choose File ▸ New Project (⌘N). FastTracker asks which kind you want. Click Single Track or arrow to that selection and hit Enter. It asks every time.

Next comes a small New document settings window. Take a breath: nothing here is permanent.

The New document settings window with Sample rate 48,000 Hz, Channels 1 (Mono) and Bit depth 24-bit — New document settings. The first time, it starts at 48,000 Hz, mono, 24-bit.

Setting	What it means
Sample rate	How finely the sound is measured: from 22,050 up to 96,000 Hz. 48,000 Hz is a good all-round answer, and 44,100 Hz is the CD standard.
Channels	1 (Mono) for one voice, 2 (Stereo) for music or anything with left and right.
Bit depth	How much detail each measurement holds. More bits, bigger file.

These choose how your first save is offered. Inside the window the audio is always edited at full quality, whatever you choose, and FastTracker remembers your answers for next time. Click OK and you get an empty window in a new tab, with an orange banner at the bottom telling you how to begin: Hit “R” to record, drop in an audio file, or use CMD-O to open one. (Point at the empty part of the waveform and the status bar says the same.) (While it is empty there is nothing to save, and the Mode Button just closes the window.)

The Single Track Mode window, empty, with an orange banner at the bottom about recording, dropping in an audio file, or opening one — An empty window, ready to go.

2. Record

1Tap R. FastTracker starts listening, and the waveform grows as you speak. It grows out to the right edge of the window and then slides left, and the zoom stays where it was. A stereo document draws both sides as you record.
2Say something. Anything. “Testing, one, two” has a long and honorable history.
3Tap R (or Space) again to stop.

Don’t like it? Esc while recording throws the take away, and Undo ⌘Z brings it back. The master meters at the right, and the dB number under them, follow your voice while you record, and the number holds the loudest peak of the take, so you can see at a glance whether you were too hot.

Which microphone, mono or stereo, and how the level is set when a take ends can be chosen in FastTracker ▸ Settings ▸ Recording. The settings are explained in Recording a Voice, and they work the same in both modes.

💡

Recording starts wherever the playhead is, and what you record goes in right there, with everything after it moved along to make room. So you can record into the middle of something that already exists and you won't clobber what comes after.

3. A Tour of the Window

Open any recording and you will see the same handful of things. (To try it on a file you already have, choose File ▸ Open…, ⌘O, and pick an audio file.)

The Single Track Mode window with a recording open: favorites bar at the left, the ruler, the waveform with left channel above right, a dB scale at the right of the lane, the play button, zoom slider, Undo, Export, and the master meters — A recording in the window.

The waveform. A stereo file shows the left channel above the right; a mono file has one lane. Taller means louder.
The ruler along the top counts time, and the red line with a triangle on top is the playhead. Click in the waveform to put the playhead there.
The dB scale at the right end of the lane reads how loud a peak really is. (View ▸ Show Scale turns it off and on.)
The favorites bar at the left is a column of one-click buttons. We will make it your own in lesson 4.
Play, time and zoom along the bottom: the round button plays, the number is the playhead’s time, and the slider zooms. When the recording is wider than the window, a scroll bar runs along the bottom (drag its handle, or click beside it to jump a page), and Option-dragging the waveform slides it along with a hand.
The master meters at the right, with the master volume under them.
Undo, Export and the Mode Button at the lower right. Undo is ⌘Z; Export is how you save a finished copy; the Mode Button takes you to Multitrack Mode.
The status bar at the very bottom tells you what is going on, and what a selection or a key will do. It is worth a glance.

Playing and Moving Around

Space plays. Tap it again to stop, and the playhead goes back to where you started, ready to hear it again. ShiftSpace pauses right where it is instead.
Home and End jump to the start and the end of the recording.
⇧L loops playback.
Click in the waveform to move the playhead. If you click while it is playing, it keeps playing from there. ← and → move it a hair at a time (10 thousandths of a second, or a tenth with Option held) when nothing is selected.

4. Save It

⌘S asks only for a name the first time (the format was chosen when the document was made). After that, ⌘S quietly saves over that file. If you opened an existing audio file, the status bar reminds you: Command and S saves your changes over it; Shift, Command and S saves a copy under another name. That Shift-Command-S panel has a Format menu beside the name, so the copy can be a different kind of file. Until you save, the file on disk is not touched. There is much more about saving in lesson 4.

Next: Tweaking a RecordingCut, fade, level, silence and paste.