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Making a "bootleg tape" on a Mac (1 Viewer)

DaveF

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I found the unwatched, unloved 2007 show The Next Great American Band to be fantastic and was very disappointed when it fizzled and no album made for the winners, The Clark Brothers. Going on a year later, and having a craving for the Clark Brothers, I decided to take matters into my own hands.

I found on YouTube were posted nearly all of their performances. With an older version of WireTap Pro, bought at the last MacHeist, I recorded all the songs. Tedious, but easy.

One at a time, I dragged the audio files into GarageBand and use it to trim the songs. I used the export to iTunes feature to send them directly to iTunes with a 256 kbps VBR rate. GarageBand was very beneficial, as it automatically normalizes the tracks during export, drastically improving the sound compared to the straight recording.

After exporting all the songs to iTunes, I edited their info to have the right artist, track name, and track number. I copied a photo of the group from their MySpace page and pasted it as the album art. A few hours later, I've got a 14-track quasi-bootleg, semi-live album of a band that I hope will soon have a real album for me to buy.

With this process, the only change I'd make is to find a better audio editor. GarageBand is adequate, and its auto-normalization and integration with iTunes is great. But it's somewhat clumsy for basic audio-file editing. Beyond that, creating a decent-quality "CD" from online sources is straight forward.
 

Parker Clack

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I have just started to work with Garage Band and didn't even know you could edit audio files with it.

I am shocked to hear that The Clark Brothers didn't get a record deal out of their win on The Next Great American Band. They were on American Idol so I thought they must be doing something with someone. They really are a good band. I would love to see what you came up with.

Sorry but I don't know of any other editing programs to use.
 

DaveF

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Ron - the latest MacHeist has SoundStudio in it, which looks like just the right tool for editing. And the newest WireTap Studio or Audio Hijack would be good too. But I don't want to spend any more $$ for these modest efforts. :)

Simply drag in an audio file and it becomes its own track. Delete any other tracks from the composition, so it's alone. Then click (or double click?) to open the track editor at the bottom of the window. There you can do basic trimming. You can also do some fading with the master volume control -- I used that on one track to get a better end from the live audience applause.

I don't watch Idol, so I didn't see them there. I'll check YouTube for a clip. I heard something about them being on Nashville Star but I don't watch that show either :)

But no, there has been nothing from NGAB so far. Maybe it takes 8+ months for a TV-show album to be made? But my wife, who's a reality TV fan, tells me it completely tanked and there is no second season. :frowning: I think they're working on an album, maybe it will be through the efforts of the NGAB people. I hope they get something out. The Clark Brothers knocked me out -- I would love to see them in concert. Ah, found Idol's clip. Their "Little Light" song was their audition song for NGAB and seems to have become their "single". It's my second favorite from them so far.
 

Christian Behrens

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Amadeus Pro should fit the bill quite nicely, too. I got a copy through MacHeist, I believe, and it helped me out when Audacity just didn't allow me to do what I needed to.

-Christian
 

MielR

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I have a somewhat related question-

I have some CDs that I recorded from LPs, and it was too much of a pain at the time to sit there and make chapter marks for each song, so I'm wondering if there's a function in either iTunes or GarageBand that will let me import the contents of the CDs, split the tracks at the appropriate points and burn them back to CD?

I just got a new MacBook and I haven't really used iTunes or GarageBand for anything yet. I tried searching in the 'help' section for both, but it didn't mention anything like that (iTunes said something about joining tracks, but not splitting them).
 

MielR

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Thanks for the info, Dave. :)

Strange that there's no track-splitting function in either iTunes or GarageBand. Oh well!
 

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