Audacity issues

[William Tranter]

I use Audacity to remove noise, delete silence at the start and end of sound clips, etc. and generally find the program very useful.
However (there's always a 'however'!), I can't find a way of joining two different sound clips to make one longer clip.
I would like sometimes to be able to 'stretch' the end of a sound clip. I save a selected length of the clip (usually the end, naturally), but I can't append it to the original clip, at least I can't find a way of doing this. Can anyone give me some pointers to this very good program?
Many thanks,
Bill

[Chuck Engels]

It is a basic Copy/Paste Bill. Open an audio clip in Audacity that you want to add another clip to then place the CTI at the end of the clip. Then open a second clip by going to File/Open and then CTRL+A to Select All, and then CTRL+C to Copy, go back to the first clip and press CTRL+V to paste.

I have multiple tutorials on this in the products section.

I would like sometimes to be able to 'stretch' the end of a sound clip. I save a selected length of the clip (usually the end, naturally), but I can't append it to the original clip, at least I can't find a way of doing this

There is a Time Stretch Tool, but I am not sure that is what you are looking for here. The Time Stretch Tool is in the Top Left Corner and looks like two opposing Arrows <------> There are six little function icons in two rows, three on the top row and three in the bottom row, all are located at the top left of the Main Audacity window. The Time Stretch is the middle one on the bottom row.

[William Tranter]

Oh, yes, I see what you mean! I've never used that particular function, because I didn't know what it did!
Your suggestion re copy and paste ought to work OK. I'm trying to make the ending of my 'jingle' to my intro. clips longer so that I can apply Reverb., possibly Echo, then Fade Out.
Because the jingle comes from just the beginning of a much longer piece of music, it terminates rather too abruptly for my liking, though in most of my videos I have disguised this fact by beginning the title music right on the end of the intro. jingle. Originally I just 'cut off' the rest of the music and just kept the first couple of phrases, as it were, and so the end is far too sudden instead of fading out as if the musical phrases had been played to that point and then stopped by the actual musicians.
I'm not explaining this very well, and this by a person who got to Grade 5 classical piano when I was a child (my late piano teacher must be rotating like a chicken on a spit in her grave - poor old Miss Priestley, bless her cotton socks!), so I should know all the right technical terms, but it was all so long ago!
Lots of thanks,
Bill

[William Tranter]

After lots of experimentation, I have just about mastered copying and pasting another piece of music to a first music selection. Great!
However, the Time Stretch tool which you pointed out to me isn't a Time Stretch tool, it's a Time SHIFT tool, and if you click it, you can then move the whole music selection to the left or to the right - why anyone would want to do this is beyond me at the moment!
I'm playing around with Audacity as I type this post, and I've discovered that the way to 'stretch' the end of my intro. jingle is to highlight the last note, then go to "Change Tempo" in the Effects drop-down menu. This actually seems to work. Don't try 'Change Speed', because this changes the pitch as well as the speed, and the resultant cacophany is appalling!
Anyway, this seems to be the way to go.
All the best and thanks for your help,
Bill

[Chuck Engels]

Glad you are getting somewhere Bill.

I didn't know exactly what you were trying to do so I suggested the Time Shift as an example of what I thought you might be trying to accomplish.

A good way to extend the length of a song without changing the tempo is to copy a part of the song (whatever length you need to add) and then paste it back into the song. You need to make it seemless but if you do an instrumental part or the chorus it can be pretty easy. I do this a lot with slideshows, you can make a 3 minute song play for 3 1/2 minutes or pretty much what ever length you need.

[William Tranter]

I've dcne this several times, both in Audacity and by trimming an Audio track and copying it several times into Premiere Elements, either way works, though using PrEl is a little more fiddly.
All the best, my friend,
Bill