How to put music from a tape onto a CD
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Contents
Page of the Moving Finger
Introduction
Ingredients
Recording
the song
Getting
the song into the computer
Using
Goldwave
Breaking
a recording into tracks
Putting the music on the CD
Playing back the music
This Do It Yourself guide is written with people in mind who might be great shakes with a guitar or a mandolin, but aren't too handy with computers. (If anyone reading it finds at times that I explain at great length things which are so obvious they don't need explaining, you've come across some place where I screwed up myself, so it's not as obvious as you think.)
What I wanted was to be able to share songs I'd
written with friends on the net - either people I've run into at
festivals or sessions who liked a song I'd sung . So I made a
page about how to put music on a website.
Now I've got a CD burner on my computer, so here is one about how
to put music on CDs. In finding free programs to help me do this
and getting my head round using them, I've had help from friends
on the
"One way" means just that - it's not necessarily the best way, but it does the trick. This page is here in the first place so that I can refer to it any time I forget how it's done, and in the second place so that when I want to get someone to let me have a CD of a tape they've made so I can hear it, it's here to tell them how they can do it, if they don't already know how. Or if someone asks me how it's done, I can just give them a link to it.
Ingredients
needed:
An
audio cassette with your song on it.
A Computer equipped with a CD recorder ("a CD burner"
)
Programs for
getting the right kind of sound file in your computer:
Goldwave
(for making a sound file in the
computer)
Wavesplitter ( a convenient way of splitting long tape recordings
into short accessible tracks on the CD.(Though this is
dispensable.)
Adaptec Easy CD Creator -
for actually putting the sounds onto the CD.
CD-R discs. You can record on these, but, unlike a tape, you cannot come back and delete and record something else and delete the earlier recording. There are discs which you can use over over again, called CD-RW discs, but they cost more and the CD-R are more convenient for this particular purpose. (However the CD burner you get should be one which is able to record to both these types of discs, because CD-RW disks are great for things you might not want to keep for good, but want to have for the time being.) CD-R discs can be got for about 40p each, though some shops charge a good bit more.
These aren't the only programs that would do, but they do the job OK, and Goldwave is shareware, so you are supposed to register it and pay a bit. (That way you get the improvements as they come in.) The basic and adequate version of Wavesplitter is free. There is a posher version that cost money, but the basic version works fine. Adaptec Easy CD Creator came along with the CD burner I bought. The version I got was 4.0. There are more advanced versions, some of which I think incorporate the facilities allowed by Wavesplitter.)
I suggest that you put links to all the programs you might need in a folder on your desktop marked Music Tools, or something like that.
Recording the song: I use an audio tape in a cassette recorder. Recording straight into the computer never seems to work well for me - there are too many sounds going on, such as the fan in the box, and anyway singing into a blank TV screen feels uncomfortable to me. Obviously, the better the quality of the recording the better, and it could be a lot better than the way I do mine. But you don'thave to have a high-powered home recording studio. I use a ghetto-blaster with a built in stereo mikes, and the quality isn't bad, considering.
From the tape recorder to the computer:
Connecting to the computer: Anyway, there you are with the tape in the recorder. Putting it into the computer is done by having a cable plugged at one end into the headphones output from the cassette recorder, and at the other into the line-in socket which is somewhere on the computer box or tower. (Probably in some totally inaccessible place. If there looks like there's a line-in plug where you can get at it easily, it's probably a dud...)
The cable I use cost a couple of quid, and is a 3.5mm (1/8") stereo plug to 3.5mm (1/8") stereo plug. If your socket on your cassette recorder is different from that you'd need to get the appropriate size plug on the cable, or an adaptor to give you the right size socket for the cable you're using. While you're about it anyway, get an appropriate splitting device, so that you can plug your headphone into the cassette recorder at the same time as the cable to the computer. (You could probably plug the headphone into the computer, but I prefer to switch off the computer's volume control while I am recording, to avoid any risk of feedback spoiling the sound.)
Using
Goldwave:
Putting the song or tune into the PC -
Next stage is to get the song from the tape into a sound file in
the computer. For that I use a program called Goldwave.
This has all kind of clever controls in it that I don't
understand too well. But if you click on its Help, it
tells you how to use them. They explain it much better than I do.
But in case your mind works the same way as mine, here is my
version:
Essentially what you are doing is telling Goldwave to listen to the sound coming through the line-in cable, and turn this into a sound file. So open up Goldwave - this may open up several little windows on the screen, but get rid of all of them except the one saying Goldwave. Then click on "File", right at the top left of the screen, which opens to give you a series of options, and you click on "New".
Up pops a box labelled "New Sound", and that also offers various options. The important one to get right is the one saying how long the song is going to be. So you check that with a watch, and enter it in the appropriate place (it's in the form minutes:seconds.thousands of a second, which took me some time to work out, since I don't normally work at that level of accuracy.) The important thing is not to understimate - it doesn't matter overestimating the time, because you can trim it later
You also have an option for going for different levels of sound quality. For this purpose the CD option and stereo sound is needed. Thta's especially if you are going to be using Wavesplitter to give you the tracks. (I don't think Wavesplitter actually cares whether there actually is a second stereo track or not, but it likes to pretend there is, even if there isn't.) But even if you are recording in mon it sounds better if you record in stereo.
So you click OK, and another little box comes up, saying it's setting up the sound file. No worry-- it hasn't recorded anything yet, it's just getting the space ready.
Get back to the screen saying Goldwave. It has a range of options up the top, the first being "File" - so you move along to the one saying "Tools" and click on that.
A menu of further options opens up. The ones you are interested in are Volume Control and Device Control.
First you click VolumeControl, and it opens up, showing you what is switched on and what isn't. You want everything muted except "Line" (and I also switch off the sound on the computer speakers, but you needn't) - and then you click on "Options" on the top left of the Volume Control screen, and then on "Properties", and then make sure that it is set to "recording" rather than "playback."
Now to Device Controls. You open that up by clicking on the Tools option on Goldwave. When the Device Controls box opens, look for the button on it with a tick on it (or "check mark" if that's what you call it), and click on that. Up comes a box with various tabs, and all kinds of options there, which are probably very helpful if you read the instructions and work them out. But the only thing I do is make sure that on the tab marked play, the only option activated (ie with a with a dot in the middle) is the one saying "All", and on the tab marked record, the only activated one is the one saying "Monitor". (This means that you can check that the sound is coming through at the right kind of level before you start recording. You unclick it before you make the recording, once you are sure the levels are right. There's a gizmo comes up with a row of boxes that light up to correspond to the sound, like you get on some stereo players - you want to make sure that the sound isn't in the red too much of the time. It's easier to understand than to explain. If you have a look in Device Control under Graph it gives you a lot of different ways of showing whether the sound level is right or not. Use the one that seems most helpful.)
When you've got it all set up, you just click on the play button on your cassette, and on the red dot on the Device Controls (which should then turn pink), and sit back while it does it's tricks.
What should happen is that it all goes smoothly. The line moves across the screen to the right end, and stops. Then the sraight line turns into a sort of jagged graph, which is a sort of picture of the sound. That means the sound is in there, in the computer, ready to be saved as a "wav file".
But first you'd better listen to it, to be sure you want to save it - and to do that you switch on your loudspeakers, and go to Volume Control . Then you make sure that Wave and Volume Control (ie the option marked Volume Control inside the screen called Volume Control - confusing) are the only ones which are not muted - and that (clicking on Options in the tope left corner), it's set for Playback rather than Recording. Then you go to Device Controls, and click the little arrow on the top left that sets it playing.
Assuming everything is OK ( a big assumption, that), click on "File" in the Goldwave screen. You get an option to Save As... and that's the one to use. (Unless you need to use the one saying "save selection as" - see section below on editing the sound.) This is actually very flexible indeed, and you can use it to produce both big files, and much smaller ones with poorer sound (and the reason you might want to do that is if you want to send a file as an attachment with an email - there's a bit about that in the page Putting music onto a website). But what you want now is a big wav file. Make sure you've got enough room for it - but you won't need to keep it if you don't want to, so you needn't worry about cluttering up your disc, if you are short of space.
So the setting I use is the default one, and I don't adjust anything, except telling it maybe where to save it, and giving the file a name you'll be able to find again.
Editing the sound: It is possible to do all kind of clever things with the sound, if you know how. I mean you can take bits out and change the key, and make it slower and faster and add echo effects, and combine it with other backing tracks and... Someday I'll learn how to do that, but it's not really necessary for what just putting a song up to share it with other people.
The main feature that I have found myself needing to use is the one for cutting bits of the beginning and end of the recording. This means I can take away the clunk when I switch on the recording, for example, and any delay while I was getting ready to start, adjustingthe tuning, whatever - and at the other end, it means I can leave a comfortable margin if I'm not sure of the exact length of a tape, and then get rid of the excess. It also allows me to can split a recording into different files, say if I recorded two songs one after the other, or a bunch of tunes. (See the next section about making tracks.)
It's best to save the file first, just in case.Then when you modify it you can save it with a different name (add a 1,2 etc for example), and if you've done it wrong you can do it all again. Keep on saving any time you do anything to change the sound.I've found that it seems to take about 3 or four takes to get it right , but soimetimes more, if you don't gte it right first time - one to get trid of the clicks and knocks and delay, one to do the same at the end, and maybe a couple to get the fade ins and fade outs right, and maybe to adjust the volume up or down at the start. (You can also be clever and change the volume of particular bits - say you hit the guitar too hard at some point. There's a control under View that comes in handy, becuase you can see the sound line blown up if you want - the two settings I use are All, which shows the whole recording, and zoom 1:1000 which shows a little tiny bit magnified, so you can deal with a little bit at a time.)
With the song in the main Goldwave window (either it is still there from recording from the tape, or you have get it back by using the "open" facility at the top left of the main Goldwave window), you just move the mouse along that jagged graph sound picture, so that the cursor is over the start of the bit you want to keep, and you left click, and everythimg to the left of the cursor greys out; then you go to the end of the bit you want to click and right click, and everything to the right of the cursor greys out. Then, the sneaky bit, open up Device Controls. (by clicking on the Tools option, and then on Device Controls.) Once again, on Device Controls click the button with a tick on it (or a check mark if that's how you talk). On the tab marked play, tick the button saying "selection". And when it comes to saving (under File), this time click on the option "save selection as" - and give it that new name I mentioned in the last paragraph. The only bit that will be saved (under the new name) is the bit that wasn't greyed out. (But since you used a new name, the original wav file with the original sound is still there to be reloaded if you got it wrong, or want to do somethig ele to it.)
And another feature that is useful is under effects/volume - you can fade in or fade out at the start and end of tracks - you just do a left click or a right click, to isolate a small chunk of soundtrack, and then select the fade in or the fade out facility. It's worth experimenting with this, because it can make things sound much less abrupt. (The zoom 1:1000 thingy under View comes in very handy here.)
Making
Tracks, using Wavesplitter:
It is possible to break a
long recordings up into sections using Goldwave,
and I mentioned how this can be done in the
secction on editing the sound. But Wavesplitter
does it quicker. At least it does if you are working from a tape
of an LP, where there are proper gaps between tracks. With a live
tape it's probably better to do the cutting up through Goldwave.
(See below, last paragraph in this section.)
Before using it you need to know two things - one is how many tracks you want to make (ie, how many songs or tunes on the tape you have put into the computer with Goldwave, and saved as a "wav" file). The other is what is the length (in seconds) of the shortest track you want to make.
So you open up Wavesplitter. Up comes a box saying "Wavesplitter", and in front it another box saying "select wav file". You use the latter box to find the wav file you want to work with, and click on it. Then you tape in the details of number of tracks and the shortest track duration (in seconds). At this time there's a bunch of tracks called 01(name of wav file).wav etc. Click to turn off "Auto Title", so you can edit these - you could change the names of the tracks, but it's better maybe just to get rid of the excess ones. (If you don't turn off Auto Title they just keep popping up again when you delete them. It's the kind of thing that drives crazy touch typists who don't watcg what is happening on the screen,)
Then you just click on the Start Processing button and go off and have a cup of tea, while Wavesplitter does its stuff. After a while it seems to have done, but give it a few mnutes extra to be sae. And there in the same folder where you have the original wav file (a folder which might best be given the name of the CD you are planning to make), alongside that big wav file, there are lots of little wav files, one for each of the tracks.
At least that is how it is supposed to be. The complication is that it sometimes happens that, for reasons of its own, Wavesplitter will sometimes run a couple of songs into one track, which means that one or more of the things that look like sound files are in fact empty. So check on this, starting with the one with the highest number and working back. Click on them and they will open with whatever sound player is the default (in my case WinAmp). Get rid of any duds, and then pick out the tracks which are overlong and split them - though you might decide not to bother, but to have one or more tracks with two songs or two tunes on them, one after the other.
If you decide to split the track, the best way
is to use Goldwave, using the
facility for selecting bits of a recording. (Where you have a bunch of tunes played as a set with
no breaks between tunes and you want to split them you'll have to
do it this way.) It should be easy enough to spot visually where
you want to make the split, but best to keep the original until
you are sure you have done it right (do this by saving the file
with a modified name - add a number or a letter etc). So, if
there are two songs, the first time round you use the right hand
clicker on the mouse to allow you to save the first song, by
getting rid of the second half of the track, and the second time
you use the left hand clicker to allow you to save the second
song by getting rid of the first half of the track. And so forth.
(NB remember to use the "selection" option in Device
Controls, and the "save as selection"
button under File.) Each time you do this you start with
the original wav file with the tracks you want to split
loaded into Goldwave. You load it from the
folder where it is stashed (along with the track files made by Wavesplitter),
using the "open" option under File (at
the top left of the screen), and the browse control as necessary..
.Putting
the music on the CD
With Adaptec this is pretty straightforward.
Click on the Adaptec icon to open up the
programme. Then select "Audio", from the
options presented to you. Then select "Audio CD"
on the next box that opens - and up comes a large Explorer type
box saying "Untitled - Easy - CDCreator". You
then open up the file in which the wav files for the
songs are stored, so that thgis and the Easy CD Creator
Explorer type box are bth on your screen at the same time, and
you hold down the let click on your mouse and drag the tracks you
want into the Easy CD Creator box. You can adjust the
order as you wish, and this will give you the order in which
tehnyracks will actually play when you are finished. And this is
maybe the best time to give them new names to identify the
individual tracks. It might also be a good idea to save the CD
layout at this point, in some appropriate folder you have set up.
(I suggest having a folder set up specifically for each CD, with
the wav files used for it. This would probably be inside
some other folder containing stuff for the music factory, or
shortcuts to the programmes you might want to use.
Then it is just a matter of clicking the button at the top saying "Create CD", and sit back while it does it - or get another cup of tea, because it takes a few minutes.
Once it's done you are offered the option of making a jewel case label and so forth - which means that you can print a list of tracks to include in the case with the CD. (It will use the names which you entered in Easy CD Creator). Label the disc either with a CD-R pen or with a stick on label that you can print with the appropriate software and sticky label blanks (CD-Stomper is perhps the best. But it's a luxury. But it's fun - for one thing you can import photos or anything for the CD labels and the CD inserts you can make. Very swish, and it ends up costing you another 30p or 40p a CD - meaning total cost is rather under £1 - roughly €1 or $1. Which shows what rip-off merchants the record companies are. "Economies of scale" indeed...It's not the musicians get most of that mark-up.)
Once you've made one CD you can copy it back, either single tracks or the whole thing, as many times as you want. And if you do this through Goldwave (it has a facility for copying tracks from CDs and turning them into wav files - it's under Tools - "CD audio extraction"), then youi can edit out any racks and noises off that have somehow crept in. And talk grandly about how you have "remastered the recording".
Playing back the music: For playing back files on the hard disc or on CDs one of the best is WinAmp, which is free. Windows Media Player, is also pretty good and free as well - and that is likely to be included with Windows anyway.
Clear your hard disc - wav files take up a lot of space, so once the CD has been made it's a good idea to get rid of the originals from the hard disc. You can always get them again from the CD, or copy to other CD-R discs, individual tracks or a whole CD at a time. If you keep all the stuff relating to a particular CD in one file for that CD, getting rid of it all is just a matter of a single click.
Any suggestions for making this clearer, let me know (put your comments in my GuestBook, or send me a PM if you are a Mudcatter, or an email, if for some bizarre reason you are not). Any mistakes or needless complications are purely down to my technical incompetence.