Things You'll Need:
- a computer with enough hard drive space to complete the job, approximately a gigabyte
- Windows XP or better, Mac OS, or Linux/Unix operating system
- a CD burner
- a media player, such as Windows Media Player, RealPlayer, Yahoo! Music Jukebox or SongBird (also open source)
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Step 1
Download your recorded sound file from your recording device to your computer's hard drive.
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Step 2
Unless you prefer another sound editing program, download and install Audacity, which is open source, meaning free.
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Step 3
Opening your file with AudacityOpen your sound file by navigating to its folder and selecting it.
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Step 4
Select what will become an individual music track. Do this by dragging your mouse across the section of your file that you would like to make a track, highlighting it. Copy the data into your mouse by selecting menu item Edit/Copy. If your file is big, this could require a short wait for the hour glass to finish.
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Step 5
Create a new file just for this track. Do this by opening a new blank file using File/New. Then Edit/Paste the data in your mouse into this new file.
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Step 6
Clean it up. Use the View/Zoom function to view your data close up, and trim up the beginning and ending seconds of the track. At the beginning, you probably just want a clean cut right up to the first beat. At the end, you might want to let the end reverberate and trail off, for a natural ending. If there is extraneous noise, like people talking in a jam session, or an audience applauding, simply cutting it off will sound chopped in the transition between tracks on your CD. So cut off at a natural place. Then select/highlight the last few seconds before that, and use the menu item Effect/Fade Out. This brings the sound level smoothly down to zero.
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Step 7
If you like, at this point, you can add about 2 seconds of silence at the end of your track for a professional touch. Position your cursor at the very end of your track and use menu item Generate/Silence. This will give you about 30 seconds of silence, of which you can trim off about 28 seconds, and it will make for a nice transition when you ultimately play back all your tracks.
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Step 8
Choose a file name and save your track to a .wav or .mp3 file or something your media player will recognize. Close this individual track file and go back to viewing the original large recorded file. Repeat steps 4 through 8 for each track you would like to extract from that file.
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Step 9
Choose your favorite media player and load your new tracks into a new playlist. Put a blank CD in your CD burner, and use your media player's Burn CD function.
