Open up Audacity (a free download & worth having).
You can use audacity with a microphone to record to your computer, you can import MP3 recordings, you can record things that are playing on your MP3 player, or you can record things that are playing on your computer. To import, go to Project-->Import Audio. This is pretty easy, so let's try something that's a bit more complicated, recording something that's playing on our computer
Go to Project-->New Audio Track
In the top tool bar, find the microphone. To the right of this, you'll see a drop down menu with three options Stereo Mix, Microphone, and Line In. Stereo Mix lets you record things playing on your computer, Microphone lets you record your voice onto your computer, and Line In lets you record things playing on your MP3 player.
Let's get an audio clip (and YouTube is GREAT for this)...Click Here. Okay, I'm a stinking liberal, but I think this guy is a laugh riot sometimes.
Click record (the red dot) on Audacity. Then go to the YouTube clip and click play. Go back to Audacity and watch the audio appear. Adjust the volume (at the top) if the sound waves are going off the track.
Let's play with this clip. First get the cursor (top right corner). Highlight the first part of the audio clip that doesn't contain any sound and hit delete.
Now let's move individual clips into separate tracks so we can play around with the editing (and so we can keep track of what clips we have).
Hit play and watch the sound waves. Click your cursor on the end point of the first clip (the first complete quote). Highlight the whole clip. Edit-->Cut.
Now go to Project-->New Track and paste the clip into the new track.
Now let's get something else to play with...some music to play in the background.
Go to Project-->New Track, then go here, click on "Recent Music," find something fun, and follow the earlier instructions for recording sound off of your computer.
Note that if you use music from PodSafe Audio, you have to abide by the Creative Commons copyrights for that music (this means only that you'll need to acknowledge the musician in your work...in the credits for your movie or digital story or in the phrase"Music by So and So from PodSafe Audio" at the end of your podcast).
To the left of the track you just recorded (and every track), note that you can adjust the volume (top line) and adjust where the sound comes from (left or right speaker). Make the music low. Use the arrow cursor to line up your voice tracks so they don't overlap. Click play & see what happens.
Then go to Project-->New Audio Track, go here, and begin recording around the 2:10 mark & finish around 2:34.
Clean this clip up so it begins where it seems to make sense & ends where you want it to.
Let's insert some silence into Bush's speech so we have some room to add in this new clip (although we could just cut up this long clip more if we wanted to.
To Generate Silence, first find where you want the silence to appear, highlight that area, then go to Generate-->Silence. Click Okay. Then move the Daffy Duck track up so you can see how to line it up with the new Silence.
To move a track around, click on the little arrow in the box next to the track and click on Move Track Up or Move Track Down. This will move the track up or down one track at a time. Notice the other things you can do when you click on the little arrow in the box next to the track. Note that I'm ignoring most of those things because I can.
Highlight the beginning of one of your sound clips, go to Effect-->Fade In. Highlight the end of one of your clips and go to Effect-->Fade Out. Highlight different parts of you audio & play around with things like echo, repeat, and change tempo. Click play before those areas to see what happens.
Now to Save & Export
To save your project so you can work on it later, just go to File-->Save and do what you normally do.
To export your project as an MP3 (so you can listen in your car or save a copy for me to listen to in my car) go to File-->Export as MP3. Our computers may not have the LAME MP3 encoder that will allow us to do that today, but this is another free download that you need to get only once, by going here, & you're good to go.
When you get home, download Audacity and the LAME MP3 encoder if you think this is software you might like to work with in future.
And now for a shameless plug: this week I'm proposing a 200-level writing course in Composing Audio Essays (podcasting) that will fulfill both the Knowledge Applications and Writing Intensive requirements for gen ed if you think you might be interested in working more with Audacity.