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You first need to connect a microphone to your computer - an inexpensive microphone will be fine for this tutorial:
Start the Audacity program; then click on the red circular button to begin recording:
Simply click on the yellow square button to stop the recording (or the blue button with the two vertical bars to pause the recording):
Note that you will view a visual representation of your audio in the "Audio Track" window. To replay your recording, position the cursor at the start of the section you want to play (just click on the visual representation of the audio), and click on the green "Play" button:
You may have to use the slider bar to increase the recording sensitivity:
Note that you can edit the audio recording - more on this later in the tutorial.
To save your recording, go to the "File" menu and select "Save Project" - this will let you save the project in Audacity's format. Then you can come back later and do more editing, mix in music, etc.
For now, you will want to export the audio recording as an mp3 file. Go to the "File" menu and select "Export as MP3":
The first time you use Audacity to export audio in mp3 format, the program will prompt you to locate the "lame_enc.dll" file (which you downloaded earlier):
Click on "Yes" and browse to the folder where you have saved the "lame_enc.dll" file. As part of the exporting process, Audacity will prompt you to enter some information ("ID3 tags") for the mp3 file, as shown below:
At the end of this process, you should have an mp3 file saved in a folder on your computer. You should be able to play this file using software such as the Windows Media Player:
Go on to the next page of this tutorial once you have mastered the basics of recording audio and exporting it as an mp3 file.
