Question about chopping music files.

[Gold Digger]

Ok...here's the dealio.

About 15 years ago, a band I was in cut a demo tape. The singer had the original masters, and we each got a copy on a cassette tape. Not great quality, but still decent.

4 years ago, friend of mine tells me he knows someone who can take the music from the tape and put it on to a CD-R. So, I now have a CD of my first band's demo. Problem is, it's just one long track. There is no separation of tracks on disk, all 8 songs in just one 29 minute track.

What I want to know is, is it possible to put this track on my computer and separate all the songs into individual tracks? If so, how do I do it and what programs will I need?

Thanks now for any help that can be given.

[xekushnr]

I use GoldWave. It's easy to use and very quick to do things like this. And the great thing is they offer a free trial, so you can do what you need and not have to pay for it.

http://www.goldwave.com

[krazydriver]

Use the line out from a stereo and plug it into either the line in or Mic input on the computer.

Download Audacity. It's free and it's easy to use.

Tell it to record the input and play the entire tape. Save this file in case you mess anything up.

Then select a section of the sound sample hit export and it will make it a seperate track. Do this until you have all the tracks you need.

Also if you download the LAME plugin for Audacity you can output as a .mp3

[Gold Digger]

Tried to use the Gold Wave program, way to much stuff for my brain to comprehend.

The Audacity program...can I still use it if I already have the file saved on my computer?

[krazydriver]

audacity can open most sound media files. It depends on what you saved the file as but you can probably open it.

[Gold Digger]

Man, I have no idea what I am doing. If I sent you the file, could you just do it for me? I know it sounds cheesy, but I have no time to fart around with it, and I am about as illiterate as they come with complex editing programs, be it with pics or music files.

If you have AIM...hit me up

[krazydriver]

hehe, i logged on AIM just as you logged off.

I'm no expert with audacity, i just have a bunch of friends that use it for editing, but if the files not too big to send as an email attachment, lob it at the email in my profile.

I'll give it a shot tomorrow and send the tracks back to you.

[Gold Digger]

Dude, the file is like 29mb, and Yahoo has a limit of 10, so I don't know how I would send it to you.

I'll just keep working with this program and see if I can eventually split it up.

Thanks

[krazydriver]

figured i'd do a write up for you to help you out, also this is kinda cool. I modified a sound track from transformers to edit it so that i'd have a .wav of megatron yelling. Now i got it as my ringer on my cellphone.

Anyways on with the how-to.First you gotta rip the cd. I did it as a .wav just because it's lossless that way, and audacity works with it.

Then i opend up the .wav in audacity and it looks like this.

The buttons on the top of the audacity toolbar allow you to play, pause, jump to end etc.... pretty much move you around in the project that your working on. So i hit play and progress until the point i want to break into a seperate sound.Then i click at that point on the soundwave so that a breakpoint is made that i can play from. Just do this to verify that your new track will be starting where you want it to.

Now that i've got a starting point, just drag it over so that you have the complete length of time that you want. If you press play it will play the selected section so you can verify this. If you need to change it, just grab the endpoint you want to move and slide it to where you want it.

Nearly done. Now just hit file, and go down to the export selection as option that you want. Select the folder you want it in, name the file and your done!I picked wav, because my cellphone won't do mp3 ringtones for some reason.

Alternatively, audacity has a silence finder, which MIGHT be able to automatically divide all the songs from the one large file. But to be honest... i don't have a clue if it works or not i've never tried it.

Hope this helps.