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How to Divide Two Music Tracks

Occasionally an album or a mix of songs is recorded as a continuous track to download instead of an album of separate tracks. This can make searching for a particular song a lot harder, especially on a portable music device, where you have to fast-forward the track to the song you want. For this reason, dividing the download into two or more tracks will save a lot of time in the future. You will need an audio editor that you can download for free online; these instructions are for use with Audacity (See Resources).

Things You'll Need

  • Audacity software installed on computer
  • Audio track to divide
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Instructions

    • 1

      Open Audacity software. Click File and select "Open" from the drop-down menu to search for the track you want to split; then double-click the track to import it into the software. The track will appear as a sound wave ready to edit.

    • 2

      Press the "Play" button on the top control panel to listen to the track. Press "Pause" at the point that you want to divide the track.

    • 3

      To get the exact divide point, place your cursor on the tracking line. The cursor will change into a hand symbol. Click and drag the tracking line to select the general area you wish to divide; this highlights the area to allow you to play only that portion of the track.

    • 4

      Click the magnifying glass with a plus symbol a few times to focus in on the selected area to make it easier to find the exact divide point.

    • 5

      Press "Play" to listen to the selected portion. Click the point on the time line/sound wave you wish to divide the track. If a moment of silence divides the tracks, this will show on the sound wave as a flat line, giving a visual indicator of the spot where you will divide the track.

    • 6

      Click and drag the tracking line to select the second song along the timeline.

    • 7

      Select "Edit" from the task bar and select "Cut" to cut the song. Select "File" from the task bar and "New" from the drop-down menu to open a new screen. On the next screen, select "Edit" and "Paste." This pastes the separated track into a new screen.

    • 8

      On each screen select "File" and "Export as MP3." Name each track and click "OK." The tracks will be saved as separate MP3s. If the "Export as MP3" option is grayed out and not selectable, you can select WAV as an alternate file type. WAV files take up more memory than MP3s, so you then may want to switch formats to MP3. Use Switch or another format-switching program to switch formats.

Recording Music

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