Making Samples with Audacity
This guide will show you how to make swood-compatible samples with Audacity.
Download and install Audacity. Be wary of sites that repackage it with viruses or trojans; these are the official downloads.
Click the red Record button in the upper left corner of the screen. Then say something into the microphone. When done, click the yellow Stop button to the left of the Record button.
Download a sound clip from the internet and click & drag it into Audacity.
#Crop the audio
Click and drag on the waveform to select a clip of audio to save. You can press the green Play button to hear what the current selection/crop sounds like.
swooded MIDIs sound better if the sounds start and end at zero (reduces "clicking"). To make sure your sample starts and ends quietly, you can slightly tweak the start and end of the sample.
Put your cursor exactly where the start of the selection is and hold down Ctrl while using your mousewheel to zoom in until you can see the individual waveforms. Then click and drag the start of the selection to somewhere where the blue line intersects with the black line (zero).
Then zoom back out and do the same thing to the end of the clip.
Click File->Export Selected Audio... in the top menu (or press Alt-F and then R). Change the Save as type: dropdown to Other uncompressed files. Set Header to WAV (Microsoft) and Encoding to Signed 32-bit PCM. Then, go to the directory you want to save it in. Double-check the filename ends in .wav, not .aiff, and then click Save.
