How to Break Up a Song on a Mac

You can break up a song into smaller audio segments with your Mac.

When you listen to a song on your Mac, you might want to break it up into shorter segments. Sometimes a song is long, and you only want to hear the chorus, the opening melody or a drum solo, and you don't feel like having to play through the rest of the song to hear the part you want. All recent Macs come with QuickTime already installed, which you can use to break a song into sections and export the part or parts you want to keep.

Instructions

1. Click "QuickTime" on the Dock to launch Apple's native audio editing application.

2. Click "File" and then click "Open File." A dialog box appears. Navigate to the song file on your Mac you want to break up, and then click "Open" to open the song. QuickTime opens files saved in a variety of audio formats, including MP3, WAV and AIFF.

3. Drag the left time marker to the point in the song you want to designate as the beginning. Drag the right time marker to the point in the song you want to designate as the end. For example, drag the first marker to "00:00:04" to start four seconds in, and drag the second marker to "00:00:21" to set the end point at 21 seconds into the song.

4. Click "Edit" and then click "Copy." Click "File" and then click "New Player." A new empty QuickTime player appears.

5. Click "Edit" and then click "Paste." The section you broke off from the song copies into the new player window. The original song file remains intact.

6. Click "File" and then click "Export." A dialog box appears.

7. Click the "Export" pull-down menu, and then click "Movie to AIFF" if you want to save the song section as an uncompressed AIFF audio file. QuickTime does not think your audio file is a movie, but the pull-down menu option says "Movie to AIFF" nonetheless.

8. Click "Movie to MPEG-4" if you want to save a compressed MP4 audio file you can play in iTunes, Apple's native audio player, or on a portable media player, such as an iPod. Click "Options." Click the "Audio" tab. Click the "Audio Format" pull-down menu, and then click "AAC-LC (Music)." Click the "Data Rate" pull-down menu, and then click an option, such as "128 kbps." Click "OK" to save the changes.

9. Type a name for the song segment in the "Save As" text box. Click the folder on your Mac where you want to save the exported file, and then click "Save."

References

• Apple: Media Formats Supported by QuickTime Player
• Apple: Mac 101: QuickTime Player

Resources

• Apple: Support - QuickTime