I have a song I really love but the first ten seconds of it are awful. It consists of a terribly-screechy voiced kid singing the first few lines. (Note: Kids singing is not cute. It’s annoying.) After that the song picks up and becames a super awesome song.
Sometimes I don’t even want to listen to it because of the first few seconds.
Any thoughts?
Audacity is free and super easy to use. Simply download the program, open the song file and use the scissors tool to select and cut however many seconds of the song you want to eliminate. Rename and save. It likes to export as WAV. Exporting as mp3 requires downloading a codec but that only takes 30 seconds. Otherwise you can save it as wave and use an online converter like Zamzar to convert it to mp3.
Ok, I will try it this weekend, thanks.
There’s a way to do this fairly simply with iTunes but I’m terrible at giving directions. It involves changing the start-time in the song’s properties and then exporting it as a new MP3 or something. I’ve done it to create custom ring tones out of songs.
If you’re using iTunes you can get it to ignore the part you don’t want to hear easily enough. (I don’t have it in front of me so I’m going from memory here; someone correct me if I’m wrong)
Right-click on the song and choose “Get Info”. You should find a tab that will let you tell it to start and stop the song at any point you want. Set the start time to 0:10 (or whatever), synch your device, and you’ll be good to go.
And I’m glad I’m not the only one who hates the sound of singing children. Ugh.
I will try the iTunes thing first. That should carry over to my iPod, right?
Indian songs in particular are notorious for the sweet, sweet sound of children’s voices. I find it appalling.
The iTunes fix will carry over to your iPod.
Speaking of singing children, is anyone here familiar with “The Most Unwanted Music”? It seems that singing children rank right up there with opera and bagpipes…
The iTunes fix above is also really handy for creating custom ring-tones. Just clip out the 15 seconds or so you want and save as a new file. Just be sure not to check it to synch or it will show up as a song on your iPod.
+1
IMHO MP3trim is even easier to use than Audacity. The only drawback is that songs/audio tracks must be no longer than 7 minutes in length.
I love that song! Twenty some minutes of horrible horrible music and I listen to it constantly!
Neat. I recommend the Portsmouth Sinfonia.
I can identify. I have several songs in my collection with beginnings I didn’t want - either some random talking, or some weird singing that is totally different from the rest, etc. In most cases I had never heard these “openings” when the songs played on the radio, so they were a bit jarring. I used Audacity to trim them off.
It becomes horribly funny when you realize what the “opera” is about.
“American cheese worth fighting for!”
Nonsense! It’s about everything* good and wholesome in America (which at the moment may be just the cheese).
*Available at Walmart!
Wait. . .what? People don’t like bagpipe music?
I was at a party last weekend and the guest of honor was screaming that he wanted to hear some CCR. I plugged my iPod into the system and played a **Battlefield Band **cover of Bad Moon Rising. I thought all the hoots and hollers were because folks liked the music.
You can also do this in Windows Movie Maker.
After you import your audio file, zoom in so you can see the waveforms.
Play the song until it gets to where you want to make the cut, then pause.
When you get the cursor where you want it, select Clip and then Split from the menu.
After that, just delete the piece you don’t want and save the rest.
The Walmart jingles get stuck in my head a lot.
I listen to bagpipe music on my iPod sometimes…for some odd reason, it completely drowns out my office partner when played at a reasonable volume.
Here’s another option
On a Mac (Windows, I hope, wouldn’t be much different) right click the song, go to “Get info” (maybe Properties in Windows) and click on the Options tab, at which point you can change the start and end times.
If you have QuickTime, you can trim the mp3 by opening it in QuickTime. Expand the sound track so it isn’t all crunched up, and under Edit in the menu bar (don’t know if it would be Edit in Windows) choose Trim. Slide the left yellow marker at the beginning of the song to the right, then play the song to see if you have the yellow marker at the correct point.
Click the yellow Trim button on the right-hand side of the song, then go to Export under File in the menu bar.