[bmah]

What a coincidence. MrPopadopalis just asked me today how to cut songs, and I was also showing Zekramcross how to as well. I'll post what I wrote to MrPopadopalis. My method does not require a time conversion or usage of Stepmania, and can be applied for cutting songs in general:

Assuming you have Audacity, here's what I do:

programs you need:
- Audacity
- Notepad

1) Identify the start point and end point of the segment of the song you want to chop off.

2) Zoom a lot into each of those two points. For the start point, find the specific waveform of the sound that immediately begins the section you want to cut. And for the endpoint, find the specific waveform of the sound that immediately begins after the end of the section you want to cut. (simply put, find the specific spot to cut)

3) Thing about Audacity is that it doesn't seem to have an option to automatically select between two points. So you'll have to do it yourself. It's not guesswork though. This is what to do:
- In step 2, when you zoom in close to the waveform and put your marker where you want it, you'll notice the specific time (in sec.) where that sound is located within the song on the bottom left corner of the program. Take note of this and put it in notepad for reference.
- Go to "Tracks" on the top menu, and choose "Add Label to Selection". The purpose of this is to flag your exact location. Your marker will automatically select that location if you click on it.
- Do this for both your start point and end point.

3) Now since you can't auto-highlight an area between two labels, this is where the manual work comes in. Start by selecting either the start or end point. Click and drag the marker to the approximate end point. Don't try and do this when you're zoomed in too much, or else it'll take FOREVER.
Note though that you CAN resume your highlighting and dragging after releasing your mouse click. So once you've dragged relatively close to the endpoint, NOW you zoom in as close as possible. Then resume dragging until you've reached your other flag/label/point. For the exact spot of where to finish dragging, go back to your notepad file and refer to the other time you've recorded. Drag slowly and notice the time change on the bottom left as you scroll. Match that time with the recorded time.
Now you have a method to select and highlight EXACTLY between two points.

4) Delete. I personally prefer to delete from the menu option, because I don't think it's the same thing when you delete with the delete key on your keyboard. (w/e)


So the main challenge in Audacity is to find a way to select two points on an exact scale. It's doable if you do a little note-taking.

- Note that it might be difficult to find the exact point of a sound if it's all muddled up with other sounds, resulting visually in a big fat waveform with no clear way of discerning a change in the waveform. That really depends on the song or part of a song you want to cut. It's basically the same sort of issue you might face in DDream Studio (except that program helps a bit with its high-pass/low-pass filters).

- Also remember to fade-out if you're ending the song early (vice versa with fade-out). However, don't get lazy and just fade out a section of the song to "cut" it. Sometimes there are interesting tidbits of the song scattered throughout, so to incorporate those, you need to cut various parts of the song that are repetitive.

I wasn't aware of the selection bar, and I've yet to see it in Audacity, but either way, both methods can accurately pinpoint the start and endpoints for proper cutting as opposed to "approximately eyeing it".