I have a backing track that has a long intro that I don’t need. Around the 40 second mark is where I want the track to start. Anyone here know how to make such an edit? I was hoping someone here could make that edit for me. If so, I can send you the MP3. It would be much appreciated , it is a requested song for a quinceañera, and the intro on the track is sorta a dance floor killer!

Audacity download here

Bill

Hi my friend,

Else mail to me I'll help you at no cost. Just be very specific what you want when you send it to me.

Cheers,

Henni

It's very easy to do - using the mouse pointer of your PC, go to the point where you want the intro to begin, hold down the left mouse button and drag it back to the beginning of the intro. This will highlight that portion of the intro you wish to remove which is done by hitting the Delete button of your PC. It's that easy. Be sure to re-save the file so you will not lose the new version of the file.

All the best,

Gary

Will you need a count in?

Removing the stuff you don’t need is easy enough, but you might need a little count in. If you have a recording with a decent count in (at the correct tempo, or you might need to experiment with your audio editor’s tempo editor), try selecting the region and doing a bit of copy/paste into your shortened track, and slide it around until it feels okay. Set its volume to taste and then export the entire file as a new audio file.

Bit of extra work, but better than missing the start!

Thank you, gentlemen. I got it figured out using Audascity.

By the way, if your arranger supports MP3’s, I absolutely recommend using high bitrate MP3’s (320kbps) over .wav’s as, especially to my aging ears, I am really hard pressed to tell the difference from a 16/44.1 .wav, it still saves you about 50% on the file size, and most importantly, there’s no way to embed lyrics into a .wav file.

You can ‘link” them to lyric files using a computer, but if you don’t want the hassle and distraction of a laptop getting between you and the audience, having the lyrics embedded in the file itself and reading off the arranger display works well.

And, probably the icing on the cake, get a completely different arranger, or a workstation, groovebox, whatever, if it can display lyrics all you need is the mp3. No text files to link to (if the new gear can even do that), no redoing the work. Drag and drop, done!