Audacity is free and does everything except count BPM... Love it to death... I refuse to use anything else! To comment on the questions re audacity - the squeaky noise is the song being imported as the wrong file type - you need to convert it first in something like itunes and then import the mp3 or wav version. Birchio- when you say blend two songs together what exactly do you mean? fade one in over the other - if so they have to be at the same beats per minute which is the tricky part in audacity - I can explain it but at length! or do you mean you want a clean cut into a new song? The best way I have found to edit music together (as my whole concert is in four major sections with 20min music tracks) is to find a creative way of introducing a track or using a vocal sample or sound effect..... hope this helps?

I will have to let my bosses look into Audacity. I have Cool Edit, which a few years ago was bought by Adobe and is called something else, Audition, I think. Once you learn how to do it, it really is no harder than word processing.

No matter what music editing software you use, it can be easy to botch the music up when cutting down the music to dance routine length. I can't begin to count the number of times I've been at competition and heard what really amounts to a scar on the music- taking not only the audience out of the moment, but also the judges.

So I'd like to give all you fabulous dance teachers a few tips on how to edit music without leaving a big ole flub on an otherwise great song.

First: Really listen to, and understand the song all the way through. Understand the parts that make up the song: intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, ending is the most common song structure. There are certain parts of a song where the performance is almost exactly the same every time it occurs: this is most often true of the chorus of the song, so one of the easiest edits to make is to remove the second verse out of a song. Just line up the 2nd and 3rd chorus so they are overlapping exactly, and make your edit. This way, you leave the bridge intact, which gives the song (and therefore the dance) more interest over the course of the routine.

Also, watch out for exactly how you make the edit. Many folks try to make a long smooth edit... where one part of the song fades out for a few seconds while the other part of the song fades up for a few seconds. This is usually a mistake and sounds funny (unless there isn't much going on instrumentally), and can even cause distortion. Better to make a very clean and crisp edit, where one part of the song ends very nearly abruptly while the other part of the song begins nearly abruptly. I usually employ a very quick crossfade between the two parts, but it happens so quickly (usually a few milliseconds), that you can't tell there was an edit point. The important thing is to line up the beats (and hopefully also the measures) at the edit point. This brings up another part of successful music editing- make sure you have full measures lined up. Dancers count in 8s... which is usually two measures of 4/4 time. I've heard plenty of songs where the edit is in a funny spot and the measures don't line up.. which produces an "extra" couple of beats, which always sounds unnatural.

One last piece of advice I'll leave you with... how you finish the routine is the impression you leave the judges with... if the song you're working with has an ending, use it, don't just fade it out. If you're song ends so that your dancer knows exactly when to hold the final pose, it will leave both dancer and audience with a much bigger sense of accomplishment than a fade out. Just like in gymnastics, where you always want to stick the landing, the same is true of dance... and you can't "stick the landing" if the music fades out at the end.

Well, that's all the tips for now. I've got more that I've developed as a professional musician and music editor, but I'll post about other techniques later.

Now that we're about to enter competition season, take a listen to the songs you're using for your dancers. If you notice that any of the songs you've edited have a scar or two in them or a funny beginning or ending, you can send it my way, and I'll see if I can fix it up for you, retaining the original timing (or as close as possible) so that you don't have to re-choreograph! My email is: morriss@everythingcu.com

I've edited scores of songs down to dance routine length, and I've posted a classified ad in the dancer's section of dance.net: www.dance.net . . .

Best wishes for a successful competition season!
~Morriss Partee

when you have finished editing click "file" convert to MP3. If i remember correctly there is also another free program you have to download to make it work....google MP3 converter and its the 1st one that comes up (or at least it was)

if you bought the song from itunes it is not in the right format and that is why you get the squeak...you have to convert the file to an mp3 (which can usually be done by right clicking on it if that doesn't work you will have to burn it and re-import it)

Save yourself the hassle and buy your music on Amazon...its already in MP3 and usually its cheaper

To export your edit as an MP3 you will need to download a free MP3 converter...then you will be able to save your file, double click and in itunes (or your music player) it goes...

hope this helps

I have a MAC which is amazing for what we do...I now use garageband to edit. it works just like ProTools...which is what my friend who is a music producer uses, but at a simplified level. I love it and all its features. When I had a PC I used audacity and it worked well...I tried to get the MAC version so I would have something while I was learning garageband....it doesn't work as well at all....skipping and weird.

Do you know if any of these programs edit songs you download off itunes?

Hi DancingDream,

The answer is YES.

Garageband and Audacity are probably the two most popular free music editing software programs available for Mac, and Audacity is also available for the PC. Both of them will handle a variety of audio formats. For your reference, AIFF or WAV are the kind of files that are on a normal audio CD. We all know that mp3s are the most common file that is shared online. (mp3s can vary greatly in quality. Some are really poor and others can be really excellent). Believe it or not, songs you get from iTunes are not mp3s. They are m4p's. But both Garageband and Audacity can read m4p's out of iTunes and when you are done, you can export your finished file as an mp3, or save it as a WAV or AIFF file for higher quality when burning to CD.

Hope this helps!
~Morriss

I use audacity it's a free download... it is really easy to use. I had been using sound forge before I got my mac and I really loved it. but when I switched computers my sound and lighting guy suggested I switch to audacity. It took a little getting used to because I was so used to sound forge but once you are familiar with it it's great

I have also used garage band on my mac, but I find it is not as easy to edit, overlap, or fade in and out as audacity. Hope this helps!

Audacity works very well, and its FREE!