For me there is nothing quite as relaxing as the sounds of the beach. The slow crashing of waves and the gentle lapping of water in the tide pools really helps me find my inner calm. Of course, I could do without the smell of rotting fish carcasses, the constantly screeching gulls and the looming threat of melanoma. So I decided to create my own virtual beach experience using some free sound clips from the internet and the free software package called Audacity. I’ve got all the relaxation without the annoying dead fish, dive bombing birds and sunburn.

Introduction

Using environmental sounds for relaxation is nothing new. The white noise and repetition of waves or waterfalls or even a gentle rain can help a person tune out the noisy, modern world and find calm. I know it helps me relax. The big question is, do I want to buy prepackaged nature sounds or try my hand at creating my own. Plenty of retail outlets would be happy to take my money in exchange for nature sounds on CD or a fancy new environmental sound machine. There are some pretty convincing recordings out there and I must admit it was tempting to hand over a little hard earned cash for some instant gratification. Of course, if I had chosen that route this would be a very short article. In the end, I decided to use Audacity, one of my favorite free software applications, to create my own virtual trip to the beach.

Follow along in this article as I cover each step as it relates to creating a virtual trip to the shore

The process of creating environmental sound clips, or any sound clips for that matter, with Audacity is not terribly difficult. There are only a few basic steps.

1. Install Audacity
2. Find the sounds you want
3. Bring the sounds into Audacity
4. Mix the sounds together in an interesting way
5. Prepare a final audio file in a common format

Follow along in this article as I cover each step as it relates to creating a virtual trip to the shore. In the end you will hopefully find your inner calm. If nothing else, you will learn quite a bit about how Audacity works and how you can use it to make all sorts of audio projects.

Downloading and installing Audacity

The first thing I need to do is install Audacity on my computer. I’m a GNU/Linux user so I was able to find a packaged version of Audacity on my distribution CD-ROMs. If you are a penguin fan too, you’ll probably find Audacity on your distro’s install media. If you’re planning to work through this project on a Mac or a Windows machine you’ll want to visit the Audacity project web page. This is where you can find the latest downloads and installation instructions for your operating system.

Finding the essence of the ocean

The next step in my project is to find the ocean sounds that I want. Audacity has the capability to record sounds directly from a microphone onto the computer’s hard drive. This would be the best way to get authentic ocean sounds. But, unfortunately, I live hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean. So I did what any computer geek would do and downloaded some cool ocean sounds from the internet.

A quick web search for the terms “free”, “ocean”, and “sounds” came up with some good hits. I found a couple clips from a site called Shockwave-Sound.com that really fit my idea of what a relaxing day at the beach sound sound like. Specifically, I found a clip called “oceano 2 sound” that captures a big wave crash and another clip called “Ocean lap (ocean surf)” that reminds me of water slapping against the hull of a boat. Both of these sound clips are recorded in the WAV file format and are easy to import into Audacity.

Capturing nature in a computer

Once I have my sound clips from the internet, I need to get them into Audacity. Opening WAV files in a sound editor is just like opening documents in a word processor. I simply start up Audacity and choose Open… from the File menu. I then navigate to the location of the oceano2.wav file and click OK. Once the file is loaded, I can click on the big, green play button to hear the sound of a wave crashing onto the shore.

Opening WAV files in a sound editor is just like opening documents in a word processor

I also downloaded a clip of lapping water that I want to use in my project. However, I need to load this file a little differently. This time I need to choose Import Audio from the Project menu, navigate to the oceanlap (Ocean Surf).wav file and click OK. This way I get both clips in the same Audacity project instead of opening them in two separate windows.

Figure 1: Sound clips opened in Audacity

Now when I click on the play button I hear both sounds at once. If I want to hear the new, lapping ocean sound all alone, I can click on the Solo button just to the left of the waveform display. This area is called the track control panel and contains some of the information and controls that I’ll use for this project. For now I’m only interested in the Solo button. I’m satisfied that the lapping water clip sounds good by itself so I’ll click the Solo button once again to deselect it.

The ocean (remix)

Now that I’ve gotten a couple of interesting sound clips into Audacity’s buffers, I can start the process of editing and mixing them. This is where the cool stuff happens. Once you’ve gone through these steps, feel free to revisit this section and add your own personal touch to the editing and mixing.

Naming tracks

Before I get started editing, I want to make my life a little easier and give some meaningful names to the tracks I’ll be working on. I can do this clicking the downward pointing arrow on track control panel and selecting Name… from the pop-down menu. Since the first track I loaded sounds like a crashing wave, I’m going to name it just that. I will name the second track “lapping water”. You can choose any designations you like, but “crashing wave” and “lapping water” are the names I will use when referring to the tracks in this article.