Audacity is a free downloadable sound editing program that is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux platforms. It is fairly simple to use and is great for recording live music or sounds, cutting, and splicing music. It also allows the user to add basic effects to sounds and music, like fading music in or out and changing the speed of the audio file. The user can export the finished sound file as an mp3, a wav, or an ogg vorbis file, so importing edited audio files into a video editing program is easy to do and shouldn’t require any file conversion for most programs. The Audacity website has a Wiki tutorial page, which can help you learn more about the various features of the program and how to use it.